Garth Pavell

Flipping Through the Back Pages
(of Poets & Writers Magazine)

I stop to see the grave
headshots and find an 
award-winning writer. 

Her poetry collection is
grouped by bird species
that at one time chirped

from a tree in the snow
near where she learned
to kiss in unheated cars.  

I imagine we’re lovers
walking down the aisle
like a bride and groom

yet we’re strolling along
in our local supermarket
eating from the open bag

of sour cream and onion
chips sitting in that baby
seat of the shopping cart.

We’re preparing what will
be our first homecooked
meal in the candlelight

that shines from the black
and white vintage filter of
her photo in the classifieds.

Nightly News

They found him behind an honorable name
peeling from the mailbox of a beaten house
near the potato fields creeping along a dead-
end street, bound and gagged by an interstate.  

His murderous smile could resuscitate itself
like the moon comes up to an unsuspecting
sunset stripping down before she sees she is
the escort for the doomed wishes of lost men.  

His ex-wife reported he used to dance alone
in his garden with a jug of wine, and slowly
made his way to the shed where he tortured
himself as a boy before his sadness erupted

outward. Police lights pulsed like a demon’s 
eyes as he rode away in front of the cameras
that could not show his old soul was already
in solitary confinement deep inside his head.

 

Seismic Song

I was sinking in my sofa
when the earth danced 
to the hard rock drums.

At first the earthquake
sounded like another
truck tripped on traffic.   

But the rumble laughed
its way under rivers and
up the egos of buildings

where people felt they
were grains of sand in-
side their hourglasses.

Now I keep an ear
to the ground, half
hoping to hear dirt.

 

Garth Pavell is a New York writer and musician. His poems can be found in the recent or upcoming issues of Broadkill Review, Epiphany, MacQueen’s Quinterly, Peatsmoke Journal, Rise Up Review, and Stone Circle Review. To learn a bit more about his writing and music, visit him on Instagram @garth_and_the_unwieldys.