All Sorts of Possibilities

by James Kangas

Luca Bravo

This brown ceramic rooster, this mottled arc, ceaselessly crowing of its imminent fall from the bric-a-brac mantle to a headlong, unfeathered oblivion; the liquid calm of this hand’s idle arrangement on its startled throat, could spark the trick of flying blind to a streaked light, to a grand poetic dawn. This postcard from Rhode Island of the morning room’s heavy doors, the damask grouping rosy before the fireplace, the faceless mirror, the massive plaster horizon, ornate and white as a cumulus sky, to an eye less loving of the stark might conjure the muse in a skirt of billowing flame. A peach with a silver knife on a teakwood plate, a flickering smile on a mouth of crinkled parchment, on and on the images reach out: a shot of his blitzkrieg eyes, a stiletto of longing, the things dragged home out of sorrow, a crimson wash in the clouds from hearts pinned open like sheets to the wind. Picture here a caliper in a line drawing — to measure what is left when all is said and done. And then for good measure and all the bungled pieces, a ruler to draw the line.

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James Kangas is a retired librarian living in Flint, Michigan. His work has appeared in Atlanta Review, Faultline, New York Quarterly, Penn Review, Tampa Review, Unbroken, et al. His chapbook, Breath of Eden (Sibling Rivalry Press), was published in 2019.