Charles Clifford Brooks III

edgy notions


sit up, ladybug! salt-licked skin preserves young love
to endure over lighthouses, state lines,
nina simone’s sad songs.

linen long sleeve shirts still show body art,
damaged wrists, muscles
strained, pushing veins close to flesh;
the last five years
have been barren.

sea life leaps upward, her thighs,
his fingertips
dolphins between breasts shaped like teardrops
pink from sighs & friction.
neptune’s trident
fuses
the two’s pressed sexes.

swells of water crash bedclothes into the corner
where a gibson and thigh-high boots lean
from the previous afternoon.
pages are strewn like sand dollars, ink dried,
splashed with pineapple juice and lipstick.

seagulls squawk at mean children
while a ceiling fan whips hot air
and bad habits outside.
hard world is at a terrific distance, fading now,
farther, farther, farther
until only a stretch of island
is wed to the sky.

it's a flavor of madness,
of strawberries,
of what is.




Charles Clifford Brooks III has been published in The Dead Mule, Eclectica, Gloom Cupboard, The Smoking Poet, Red Fez, vox poetica, Asylum, Otoliths, Contemporary American Voices, Prick of the Spindle and Journal of Liberal Arts and Education. His poetry has been featured on the Joe Milford Poetry Show, Not Your Mother's Poetry Show and the vox poetica’s 15 Minutes of Poetry.