Two poems by Cali Kopczick

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Softpalm welcome to the door jamb
and the waiting stoop
and the quarry mined to dust to mold it.
Little mountain, meet your shadow.
 

I Learn from My Subscriptions

Squash takes a long time to bake,
but it makes its own dish.

I’d throw my own pottery
against the wall

rather than fill it with flowers.
Some Septembers, all the acorns fall at once.

I forgot the gutter
until I needed to forget the leaves.

I could forget an entire body
in Lake Washington

given the proper tidal pulls.
I have to fight the lump of clay

into the eye of the wheel.
I sense an obligatory ghost.

I sense a vacuum cleaner
or a Wednesday morning.

All of the air decides at once
that the party is in the next chamber.

The acorns were not Hoovered from the sky
we just made the ground look too good.

Stop with the chalk art. I took away your colors
and made you this plastic daisy.

It’s been waiting to meet you since before it was petroleum product.
Before it flooded your internal combustion engine.

Since before it was a dinosaur.
I stared at you while you flipped the pages of your magazine.

I cut you off when you asked me
anything, say anything. I fell into another empty waiting room.