James Charlton Poems

I have known Earth’s texture
like another skin.
All my life I have seen
the unseen entities. Each one
...

You didn’t fornicate, swear or drink.
You didn’t cheat or hate.
Each night, studying Scripture,
you thanked the Lord for dying to save you.
...

This large, sedentary spider
which shares our bathroom,
...

Your absence
holds the shape
of your face.
...

Her old VW
mows the dirt road
to my shack,
...

She wore a sheen of possum fat,
ran from the surf with high-up knees,
kept orange starfish in a pool.
She flayed the sky with kelp straps,
...

In the still heat
a breadfruit ripens:
a multitude of tiny sunspots
mounted on hexagonal platelets,
...

Random as rags whooshed off a truck,
they indolently amble on the air. This caterwaul:
wee-la. Yes, there,
...