Two poems

bloom

phone rings.
i pick up. it's darwin on the phone.
"darwin" says darwin.
"er" i say.
"darwin" says darwin.
"yeah?" i say.
"darwin" says darwin.
"pity about the dinosaurs" i say.
"darwin" says darwin.
"pity about the passenger pigeons" i say.
"darwin" says darwin.
"all those little galapagos finches --
they're just so darn cute" i say.
"darwin" says darwin.
i think by now darwin is crying.
"their beaks" i say, "their lovely little beaks
are just so, well, so useful, so practical."
by now i'm crying too.
"darwin" says darwin.
"good-bye" i say.
"darwin" says darwin.
i hear the "click" on the other end.
i hang up.
i'm very sad, but kinda, well, not sad at
all.  then i have
pancakes for breakfast. with blueberries.
genetic miracles. bigger than they ever were
before.

--Carl Miller Daniels (This poem first appeared in My Favorite Bullet, June 2008, Vol. 8, Issue 2. It was recently published as a broadside by 48th Street Press. And it also appears in my book String Bean, published by BareBackPress in March of 2018.)

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rounds

oh it's just a matter of time until
the peaches fall from their trees and
into the tooth-studded jaws of the slick red foxes who
wait so restlessly below, their
eyes umber fire, tongues licking their
feral lips with long delicate
slick wet pinknesses.
the rooftops, hot ruddy terra cotta
tiles in the 110 degrees
Fahrenheit summer
heat, holes in the
golf courses plugged
up with the most obscene
of all possible debris--
hankies soaked with
the cum of
svelte naked young men,
their penis-tips still warm
and smeary with the open
hostility of their
own pent-up goo.
clicking cameras sometimes
catch all the action, but,
only rarely,
the steam.

--Carl Miller Daniels (This poem first appeared in Chiron Review, Issue #101, Fall 2015. It also appears in my book String Bean.)