Great Salt Lake / Neighbors by Dane Karnick

Great Salt Lake

My stepfather parks
Our family Buick
Past the southern shoreline

To revere those mud flats
Reflecting turquoise
Along unbroken sky

While killdeer chase brine flies
Across the belly
Of lakes come and gone

Their white crystals spread wide
Toward Wasatch Mountains
As we talk about his dad

Drinking in the barn
Through many afternoons
But the words dry up like

Most of our conversations
So we stare at the wind
Raiding nooks and crannies

Over limestone ridges that
Interrupt the saline plains
Constant as human anguish




Neighbors

Some staff say the phantom
Is a congressman who jumped
Out of his fifth-floor office
In the Arctic Hotel
To stay as a resident
From the other side
Of reason fractured
In this gold rush building

Where the elevator goes
To his level empty
From days of his mood swings
Championing the needy
Among billiard rooms
And smoky card tables
He persists in some way
To follow guests around

With his erratic state
Freezing corridors and
Scuffing a path across
The floor that divides
His home from our world
Rooted through his rootless soul
Who fades in and out of
What we think we know

Dane Karnick grew up by the Colorado “Rockies” and has lived in the Seattle area for 30 years. His poetry has appeared in publications like One Art, Umbrella Factory and The Poetry Box.

Two Poems by Dane Karnick

El Pintor

After the watercolor by Amado Peña, 1983

The painter is secluded

Yet accompanied

By los fantasmas

Phantoms who inhabit

Pueblo sun-dried bricks

From a thousand years

Assist the artist with 

Canvass mutterings

To guide brush hairs through

Turquoise and ochre

Lucid as sky above land

In contemplación

Between living and dead

This plain shared together

In adobe corridors

By Red Willow People

Still painting in flesh

Around bones of yesterday

Their sombreros above time

Unhurried as specters 

Woman With Oranges

After the painting by RC Gorman, 1983

A Navojo woman is

Confounded by fruit

That leaves when she exits

And appears when she arrives

Usually half-dozen

At home or anywhere else

Their shadows in ripe sun

Ready to be eaten 

But gone upon puncture

Their petite goodbye

On the heals of another

Manifestation

For her quizzical look

At silent companions

Consuming her time

As if expecting her

To make spherical sense

Of friendly still life

Dane Karnick grew up by the Colorado “Rockies” and lives near Seattle.  His poetry recently appeared in Treehouse Arts, Scarlet Leaf, riverrun and Gravel.  Visit him at www.danekarnick.com.

Arctic Expedition by Dane Karnick

Stupendously alone

The Franklin vessel sleeps

Beneath the fathoms

 

Of Victoria Strait

As sonar reveals 

Its old resting place

 

With its crumpled bow

Snatched from the world

When ice ingested the ship

 

Forcing its crew to walk

Across miles of fatigue

Stuck between their bones

 

While each man fell into

The mausoleum of snow

With fierce inertia.

 

Dane Karnick grew up by the Colorado “Rockies” and lives near Seattle.  His poetry recently appeared in Here/There, Bookends Review, Eunioa Review and Indiana Voice Journal.  Visit him at www.danekarnick.com.

Two Poems by Dane Karnick

Phantom

 

I’m in a séance with morning fog

guiding my walk along sandstone

wrapped by vapor that conceals miles

of sediment while ponderosa

assemble and disintegrate

as if forming in a crystal ball

revealing secrets like scrub oak

that briefly confirms itself

with each step I look deeper

summoning a magpie to

hop into view but it dissolves

into boredom expecting

my respect even though

distractions are plenty

as insects this dullness

does not hide its contours

billowing around my head like

a message from the deceased

asking me to forgive the mist.

 

 

Corpus Delicti

 

The season of night is ebony’s snow

dusting rooftops from a charcoal sky

for the pallbearer of dusk to

parade our streets while shadows stalk

their rabbit holes past eyes like mine

scanning the obituary

of daylight as survivors wait

to be seized by the fangs

of slumber persistent as

Nosferatu in a grip of

lethargy terminating

vital signs block by block

embalming our minds with a hush

so rigor mortis can play dead

fooling those who stay awake

conducting their autopsy

on the hours that departed.

 

Dane Karnick grew up by the Colorado “Rockies” and lives near Seattle.  His poetry recently appeared in Hawaii Pacific Review, Pastiche, madswirl and is forthcoming in Alba and Pacifica Review.  Visit him at Dane Karnick's Poetry.