DUSTIN PICKERING

Dustin Pickering. Photograph by permission of the author

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Sheaf of Weeping

Be still my raven with beating wings
lest the ashes of solitude value the clusters
of unbecoming.
I am taken by lackluster jewels
under the sands of rumor.
Your eyes will hide the livid saint.

*

The leaves broken in the night
with ink-ridden hands,
trusted the bowels of poesy
for the love of wrath created therein.

A sheaf of weeping for the moment to keep.

*

Empyrean

Go to the milky dust
of such an abysmal prospect,
find the fair life!

Soldier-doom with these wonders
will winnow the imagination.
I shut the wish on one eyelid.
Dying is an answer to witness.

If cages kept me straightened
like hair in curlers,
I am imprisoned to the woman
of your works.

I will taste the fascination
of theaters where the powers
are assassinated — O, this!
A tomb where his name is revealed.

*

She wants them returned

I cannot live in these children’s fears —
the total push of their little hands.
We are tired of blackened wombs,
still roses,
fetal memories.

Their little hands are made of memories.
Faces so gleamed that purity resounds.
The furniture of our longings
cannot remain short.

Down the train-car where rails are broken,
the boost of your image is united.
Listen to the purity of her purr.
She wants these children.
She wants them returned.

*

The Ramifications of Touch

In need of absolute solitude,
the poet pious in the hall
holding light like a dreamer
stands for his own flesh.

Watching a mirror escalate the instance
of fallen natures —
one of those moments when cries hide the truth.
What do I know about myself?

Oh, but if you hide in the voluptuousness of greed,
but seek the meaning of insolence
you will not find it for the dream is not what you are.
But I gravitate fondly to the image.

Nothing sings to me like a lonesome bird.

*

Faux

At the threshold of death, deep in flight
the sparrow dreams its own reckoning.
As a bird thinks of skeletons,
this tiny creature would rather jilt
the oceans against us —
thinking of bluest bliss where the eyes
cannot see what depth is dragging in.

*
Rivers of the Fear We Trust

I escape past the clueless nuts
of my dream into fields of promise.
Sagacious tunnels of terror,
thought and its golden axe of joy
tearing at insipid towers:
trees can only bear us.

The wind is frightening.
Escalating like a finger in wet dirt,
carving the initials of the dead
before us,
waiting to waken the totality of bliss.

Yet we only know this —
only once does it come around.

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DUSTIN PICKERING is founder of Transcendent Zero Press. He has contributed writing to Huffington Post, Los Angeles Review, The Statesman (India), Journal of Liberty and International Affairs, The Colorado Review, World Literature Today, Asymptote Journal, and others. He is the author of numerous poetry collections and books including Salt and Sorrow. He placed in the top 100 for the erbacce prize in 2021 and 2023, and was a finalist in Adelaide Literary Journal’s first short fiction contest. He was longlisted for the Rahim Karim World Prize in 2022 and given the honour of Knight of World Peace by the World Institute for Peace that same year. He hosts the popular interview series ‘World Inkers Network’ on YouTube, and co-founded World Inkers Printing and Publishing.