Keith Gaboury

Every time the bell rings,
I feel the jolt of his
rag doll body flying
on the fringes between
...

I have stolen
the rainbow fishes
that were in
the fish tank
...

dandelion fuzz
spikes past
a hummingbird’s
slapshot blurred wings
...

searches the outline of her shadow
on a sizzling jungle gym blacktop
where a highway friend
zipped in and out of focus
...

My mother told me to believe in God.
My father told me to believe in whatever I wanted.
My brother told me that it doesn’t matter what
you believe, just as long as you believe in something.
...

Poetry should come from the inside out,
from the soul’s cherry pit to the tip of the pen
capturing and holding onto the
beauty found in the ordinary:
...

Poetry pours out of the mouth
and drops like pebbles into an ocean,
causing ripples and white-crust waves
to form on a shore as the tide comes in
...

Amathophobia
Cacophobia
Bufonophobia
Agliophobia
...

that somebody else’s
freedom is worth a mother
losing her son on a desert
battlefield filled with bullets
...

Wished away dandelion bones
scatters about, six feet under,
a separation that sends a
chill of meditation or menace
...

Ice clanking vodka kisses
the scarred lips
of a man searching
beyond the encompassing
...

plastic groom, plastic bride
stuck deep
in idealistic icing-
vows uttered though
...

crunching on freshly fallen leaves,
a child aimlessly searches for some form of
i m a g i n a t i o n,
yearning to coil his mind like a wire-
...

a mother's tired hands
scrubs her shivering son
with a soapy washcloth
in rising tepid water
...

castles crafted by
sand-covered fingers
held within a skeleton of
crushing white lip waves
...

Shimmering silverware clanked
against the perfect plates
as an uneasy, upset silence
draped over the dinner table,
...