Poetry By Maxwell Redder

 

An Audacious Escape

Now parked, I saw the firefly
ascending from my truck bed.
His fluorescent tube acted
as a gentle jetpack, a hovercraft,
an audacious escape.

Relaxing on rusty vacant bolt holes
previously used to clasp the cap,
he did not recognize my turning ignition
signified a twelve mile drive
down the orange-barreled highway.

He must have moved to a cozy stick
safely tucked between turbulent winds;
held tightly inside the air pocket.
Was there fear? Being taken from
all that was family? His family tree:

a distant dream. Now a foreigner
ripped from the ghetto that his companions
and he developed together as larva.
Hatched. Took flight;
flashing their unique twinkles for females

watching in the leaves. Conversely,
like a stowaway praying
inside the cabinet of a ship,
he may have executed
an audacious escape.

 

BRAID
Braid The Title
is Hair

I.

Comforting for nine months
then responsibility for three,
is long hair controlling?

B.

Paragraphs stitched
to the pulling spine of a book
whose even drawl

lassos the hips of readers
like panties following shoes
to hit the floor

#3.

stumbling toward a pillow
to crash upon, nine shows to catch;
three hours

cringing with a bout
of paralysis and wonder,
suction and gravity, glued

while constantly sucking the teat –
is it the television or the viewer
whom owns the breast?

 

The Laughing Cloud

Sinking my foot slightly
into mossy grasses neighboring
the trails dampening muck,
appreciating a break
atop the thinning apex,
waving branches of brush
absorb water molecules
like a bees-comb;
flimsy honey draping over fabric walls:
soft dimpled spines. Absorbent graph.

“View is fogged,”
slung the sulking hiker;
grays and whites zipped to spirals
as his disappointed form
tickled the laughing cloud
while maintaining constant stride
like a skier sledding by;
unappreciative of natural speed.

Break: a necessary nuisance.
Sight inside a cloud: soft gray
molecules swallowing, processing,
then cooling bodies by leaving
a satisfied film of mist
over all that she touched.