DANE KARNICK - POEMS

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​Dane Karnick grew up by the Colorado “Rockies” and lives near Seattle.  His poetry recently appeared in Gravel, Here/There and Bookends Review.  Visit him at www.danekarnick.com.

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                                   The Railroad Crossing
 


On the west of end of Widefield
Was a demarcation
Where hammers and saws would not
Cross over to build rooftops
Beyond Canam Highway
 
A place Dad would drive me
In his ’55 Bel Air
On Sunday afternoons
With no special reason
Except to see the other side
 
Unfurl endless sagebrush
With no roads to enter
Like Father’s private   life
Across dusty plains
Bereft of signposts
 
From those wooden tracks
Marshaling infinity
On either side of us
Gawking at immensity
Squeezed between our shoulders 
 
  
 
                                    Teenage Therapy
 

As Chris and I drive south
In his parent’s Oldsmobile
The speedometer chases
One hundred twenty
 
Toward Sagittarius
A half-human creature
Stalking El Paso County
Through the high beams of
 
Our car that snarls at
Constellations rigid
As Marksheffel Road
Taking us away from
 
Family break ups while
We roar underneath
A tributary of stars
Summoning regard like
 
So many nights gazing
In telescopes that
Funneled our anger
Through apathetic space
 
 

 
                                          To Smokers
 

You are a celebrity
When crossing my gaze
With your nomadic swirl
Unfurled in urban crowds
 
As you skillfully inhale
While pedestrians walk by
That ritual incense
Blessing your body
 
Sometimes you stand alone at
A restaurant back door
Blowing a small cumulus
Near your bewitched fingers
 
Or your left hand does arm curls
Out the driver window
Pausing for the luscious cloud
Above the sprawl of muscle
 
How hypnotic that burn
Of tobacco with its fire
Waving turbulent thoughts
Into extinguished care
 
 

 
 
                                       Improvisation 6

After the drawing by Cheryl Richey, 2014
 
Some impromptu moments
Occur like an itch
In the hippocampus
 
Calling for attention
From its squashed room
That is narcoleptic
 
Yet manages to budge
As if hatching from
Years of incubation
 
The urge to burst out
And scribble away
The darkness that had
 
Held everything so tight
In a merciless egg
Now slithers unaided
 
Toward a midday sun
Revealing on its path
The need to stay eclipsed
 
 

 
 
                                  Door to Nowhere
​
After the photograph by Helen Geld, 2012
 
Never to open again
The handle was removed
Just like the memory in
This short alley entrance
 
Distinct extinction
For the Ballard tavern
Banished behind lumber as
A backstreet Siberia
 
With its latitude
Of secrets closed away
In remote terrain
Beyond geography
 
A place we settle for
In our conversations
Where intimacy follows
The butchery of hush