Skip to content

Author: James Brush

James Brush is a teacher and writer who lives in Austin, TX. He tries to get outside as much as possible.

Gull Impostor

April 4, 2011 • • 6 Comments

Stretch your arms, rock to and fro
on the abandoned tracks, imagine

you’re a great ocean bird. Swoop,
dive, fly up to dizzying heights, peer

down to a rippled carpet, the ocean,
far below. Lean into your dive, feel

gravity’s pull, the insistence of textbook laws,
the water miles away. Accelerating,

you race until at the last moment,
wings straining with the effort, you pull

up. Soar away from collision, use
momentum to regain the sky. Eager

you test yourself against another drop.
Open your eyes. Disoriented, you’re standing

on the broken tracks, arms outstretched.
A flock of gulls about their business stays

a safe distance away. They have no idea
you flew with them. They watch

you with aviator’s eyes, making sure
you never attempt to get too close.

Walking home, you wonder if the sky is
farther away than ever, if you’ll ever belong.

Here Comes a Twister

April 1, 2011 • • 12 Comments

She grew up in the land of twisters,
seeking shelter in middle bathrooms.

She baptized herself in the rivers of glass
sparkling through the broken house.

Wall clouds turned and blackened,
the sky decayed, fell down from itself.

Monsters ate trees in the night
but by morning, birds always returned,

the feeders full of color and song,
while all around hailstones melted.

Only small questions remained, then;
the big ones were all torn up

with the trees and trails, apologies
she used to believe she owed.

A familiar man in coveralls claims
he can repair the roof faster, cheaper,

better than the other guys who don’t
understand these things (sign here please).

Her fists clench, knuckles ache like love;
she relaxes only when he leaves.

She whispers secrets to her daughter:
about the days of electricity and engines,

about the thrill of kneeling wild-eyed
before the weather radio’s robot voice,

about prayers for thunder and wind,
about how she learned to control storms

and how everything that happens
flashes in a dark and roaring instant.

—

Call this my first NaPoWriMo poem for this April. I had mixed feelings about the whole thing last year, but here I am again, back for more. I won’t be posting here on weekends, of course, but I’ll still be writing my daily stones at a gnarled oak (but I often don’t post weekend stones until Monday). One where or another, though, there will be daily poems.

Because this Blog Has Mercury in Its Name

March 30, 2011 • • 5 Comments
MESSENGER's first picture from Mercury orbit (courtesy NASA)

This is the first image ever taken from orbit around Mercury. Pretty cool, right? The image comes from NASA’s MESSENGER. NASA had this to say on its image of the day page:

At 5:20 am EDT on Mar. 29, 2011, MESSENGER captured this historic image of Mercury. This image is the first ever obtained from a spacecraft in orbit about the Solar System’s innermost planet. Over the subsequent six hours, MESSENGER acquired an additional 363 images before downlinking some of the data to Earth. The MESSENGER team is currently looking over the newly returned data, which are still continuing to come down.

Phil at Bad Astronomy has more including the name of that big crater, Debussy.

A Texas Highway in Springtime

March 22, 2011 • • 4 Comments

The soaring hawks who patrolled this highway
through the winter watched as wildflowers grew.
As if the sky were napping on the earth,
the fields in spring explode in deepest blue.

Fields mirror sky and fill with the shadows
of hawks and vultures flying through flowers.
Bipedal hairless apes swarm through the fields,
teeth bared, pointing rectangles at each other.

In just a few more weeks, the bluebonnets
will wither and be swallowed by the grass.
Then the soaring hawks will get their fields back
as, ignoring green, the apes just drive on past.

—

This was first published at Bolts of Silk (thanks, Juliet!) back in May 2009. I figured I’d share it here now since it’s springtime and our awesome Texas wildflowers are starting to show up along the highways. Also, I’m busy and getting over a cold so it’s a good time for posting reruns of a sort.

—

Caroline at Caroline at Coastcard [Land & Lit] wrote some very nice things about last year’s gnarled oak chapbook. They’re all gone now, but you can still read them online (though apparently not if you’re using an iphone).

—

Dave Bonta is running a cool little contest over at Moving Poems wherein contestants will produce a videopoem using Howie Good’s poem “Fable.” I’m almost done with my entry. Deadline is April 15. Check it out.

The Greyhound Muse

March 16, 2011 • • 2 Comments

Perhaps I should be the poet laureate of my dog since Joey appears in two poems of mine that are recently published. The first, “Greyhound Joey vs. the Grackle” appears along with “North through Fog” in the February 2011 issue of the Houston Literary Review. The first of those is from my “Birds Nobody Loves” series which will someday be a chapbook and the other is from the “Highway Sky” series which is starting to sneak beyond chapbook length. Thanks to the editors of the Houston Literary Review for publishing those.

Joey’s literary adventures don’t end there, though. He also appears in a micro-haibun in the new pay attention: a river of stones anthology published by Fiona Robyn and Kaspalita who edited a massive amount of submissions from January’s river of stones challenge to produce a beautiful book that is worth every moment spent slowing down to savor it. There were a number of stones that I read in January as well as many that I missed along with some wonderful prose pieces. It was a treat to read again some of my favorites by Beth Adams, Angie Werren, Mark Stratton, and Kris Lindbeck. Along with some prose reflections on small stone writing by Beth Adams, Jean Morris, Laurie Kolp and Margo Roby. You can read the 2 stones I contributed at my mirco-poetry blog here and here (the second is another “Birds Nobody Loves” piece) or you can buy the book, which is really good.

And, now, Joey needs a walk. We’ll talk literature, and he’ll remind me that greyhounds are the only breed of dog mentioned in the Bible and then, who knows what inspiration the four-legged muse will next provide.

[saveagrey]

Flags of Convenience

March 10, 2011 • • 5 Comments

Flecks of sea rust
trailed phantom ships,

their crews (it’s said)
marooned in paradise.

In this crash economy
we had no choice—

fight the fishing fleets,
reflag at sea.

An old fax machine
wired to a car battery

sent our request to join
some landlocked navy.

We lined up behind
flags of convenience

leading us forever
from our green homes.

While sharks & frigates circled,
I reckoned the distance

between two hearts
and almost made the leap.

—

This came from reading a series of articles on piracy in the Naval War College Review (Summer 2009, Vol. 62 No. 3).

Chuy’s

March 9, 2011 • • Leave a comment

I’ve been eating at Chuy’s as long as I’ve been living in Austin. What do I eat? More often than not, the chile relleno-enchilada combo: cheese relleno with Hatch green chile sauce and a boom-boom enchilada. Green chile rice. Refried beans. Creamy jalapeno dip. Iced tea.

I’m not sure I could live outside the southwest anymore.

The Matter of Dancing the Tangle

March 4, 2011 • • 20 Comments

there is the matter of slipping below streets
where other worlds lie deeper still

parades of skulls answer boyish dreams
where flashlights’ flames throw question marks

illuminating smiles and bare thighs
(don’t say more before we wake)

the space spins round a radio star
sweat, short skirts and cowboy boots

typical typical a laugh a sigh
he starts by saying more

when less is better
she finishes by saying nothing

there is also the matter of energy
when D.J.’s lock in with the subway rumble

there is also the energy of matter
and dancing the tangle of time and bass

there is also the matter of knowing
when to burn and when to gasp

there is also the matter of morning
when the last one up turns out the lights

—

This is written in response to the latest Big Tent Poetry prompt, which was a list of words and phrases. It also owes much to the recent National Geographic article “Under Paris” (Feb 2011).

Check out what others did with the prompt here.

Here We Go Again

March 2, 2011 • • 1 Comment

She holds her smoke. She’s swallowed the sun. Tendrils drift blue from her nose, a curtain obscuring the year. Cars weave through the lot. She stands among leaves, refusing to flinch at the sound of tires rolling over gravel like fragile bones. Her resistance radiates through the trees’ bare branches and out to space with the smoke from her lungs as the light between her fingers fades. She flicks the butt to the sidewalk, a comet to inspire the prophesies and curses of the ants. She runs her hands through her long and tired hair, pushes open the door surprising herself by humming snatches of a tune she thought she’d forgotten. The ants gather to celebrate this thing, this fire, they believe is theirs.

—

Prose poem or flash fiction? Who knows. This is based on this old post from 2009.