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"T.M. Göttl's
poems arrive in vivid clusters, filled with wild energy and
unexpected twists. These are poems from the human
volcano, erupting with emotion, and balanced by stark
realizations and personal truths."
--Mark S. Kuhar, editor of Deep Cleveland Press
"This is a book of
depth and beauty to be read and reread."
--J.E. Stanley, author of Dark Intervals and Dissonance
"This is poetry
you've waited a lifetime for."
-- Dan Smith, author of Crooked River
Order T.M. Göttl's first full length collection of poetry:
Stretching the Window
now!
Winner 2007 Wayne
College Regional Writing Awards:
Searching for the
Big Skies
(2007)
I told you
last week
that someone
planted
a plaster
Virgin Mother
in a flower
bed behind
some leafy
red cabbage,
with a
fiberglass reindeer shepherding the entire array.
And of all
the dispersing pedestrians, not one
saw anything
perverse or faulty, just continued blinking
into the sun
spots, flipping the red and orange
radio
frequencies in their heads.
But when you
heard the Christmas geese
drifting past
your window
on that hot
green night at 2 a.m.,
you finally
believed the truth:
the Ohio
skies are shrinking.
And the
starlings, like so many
copper petals
and gongs,
heard that
same sonic boom,
evacuating on
hot feet and spicy wings
from the
wicked flames invading their tall grass,
smoking like
violated oil wells
and sad
automobile tires.
Lost and
wandering between the cookie cutters
in a steel
and vinyl suburb,
you told me
how you climbed a hill,
hoping that
it might roll over, scratching
in its
soporific adventures, and either gently or growling,
it might have
offered you some direction.
But it wasn't
even a real hill,
just a mound
of construction site refugees,
a bed of
roughhousing for backhoes and bulldogs.
Remember when
we used to leave landscaping
to the
migrating herds and the gods
of lava and
tectonic cultivation?
Before we
flew the banners of cartoon heroes
from our flag
poles, and glued stickers of frogs
in the
concrete next to the sanitary sewers?
You told me
how
the rocks all
started cracking and buzzing
because some
chimaera had trapped
the black and
yellow grasshoppers inside,
before they
had the chance
to follow the
starlings,
as the sky
kept growing smaller and smaller.
© 2007 T.M. Göttl
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