deep cleveland - featured poets & artists

featured poets & artists

ed higgins

poems and short fiction have appeared in Duck & Herring Co.'s Pocket Field Guide, Monkeybicycle Pindeldyboz, and Bellowing Ark, as well as the online journals Lily, CrossConnect, Word Riot, The Centrifugal Eye, Mannequin Envy, and Blue Print Review, among others. he lives on a small farm in Yamhill, Oregon with a menagerie of animals including an emu named To & Fro and he teaches creative writing and literature at George Fox University, south of Portland.

What We Had

We honed each other
knife & poem
til both
bled.

2tears

the dew
of you

&/you
do
devil 2

don't you?
lite blue

of demon hue
yr eyes

drawn un2
i am 2

to yr dawn
duo lies.

descent

id you ever
hid you in un there
way way wary
down dare-deep
where ergonomic you just go

a crash diving sub/sub
but holey/holy only you
fright-frightened to know
now the lid nailed flat
over ego's coffin

light (in)sufficient
bare(ly) enough doubt
for turning room
buoys sent up for others
marking danger

now dong-dong
gurgle-burble gone
ding-ding late for you
scraping whale gray
mental asides you
sink/stink

bottom at jonah-level
down down phew/peeyoohoooo
you do/due/do prayer too
on your own shelf
secrete out darkness

old wounds & such & such
furious sighs fly like flies
sawing dead meat
thin scar-scary tissue
all/any lingering issue

of damn-id damneditall
damage of never ever
'til your wound has healed?

chicken little considers the sky again

sure i'm still running around like a heads-up/off/prophet trying to cut off our very own de(con)struction and all that other sordid aovoidoable &/a-Babel towers of post &modern doom/daze re(altho)guarding our environment in/ex/&/anterior terror too sometimesoalways all afright with me/she/henish looking like this diminutive incarnation of Kali only in a bantam suit or else a head&heedless moreorless Irish banshee keen/for/keening before the sky's death knellonaromaronoiosome or just write-it-off darkest noir overousoall or to be exact that is of mankinda-ah-so-dumb! so youbetcha any/old/witch/a/way this omenoamenoahem surely assures our sky will soon be falling tumbling twisting howling hellish or like as in all Kansas gone rumbling under black cloud vengeance of truly veritas verily eerily or/and just-adjust-for-justice black fright dust thrown/throw up into our frailofrayofecklessofey faces like darkodeathoaces of ominous inspades while attending/to/attempting/to down-daft de/feet Dorothy's own immense tobeochickenshitodowner over/under these scaly-scrambling hen's scratchings caw/clawings of mine carrying/crying/cravening on in my fumble feeble way past Mcdonalds, Jack-in-the-Boohooed, KFSeeeee! box(ed) up/ended in disheveled feathered ruffled time-for time's-up or just downwriteodowntheriveropluckedofucked. so as usual i'm still running around re: rear/guarding this dumbstate of doom.