Poetry by Jeff Bagato

The Pancake Face of Terror

A face like a plane, all across
the world, broad and with a curved
horizon, the eye splayed out
and somehow looking back--
that flatness sucks you out
onto the air, always
gazing
up at you as you fall

This vision in the window
after midnight
after reading Baudelaire
after a rare day of holding
a woman and the envious closeness
all men and women long
for all over the world, lacking
which they start wars
and kill each other
for a pair of shoes, a bottle
of medicine—numbing the pain

For such a day I’d fall
into the pancake face of terror;

but these days never
ask

They give:
              taking
the anger and making it
possible to have visions

of the flat face of anger,
the flat plane
of hating desire




Dreams Going Home

Traveling through time to get here,
still at the wheel, jerking
awake on the last legs at
70 mph and a downhill run,
dreaming to come home, practicing
arrival like first steps planned
from the cradle inch by inch,
slow steps seen and done in sleep
until you wake choking white puke
on the mountain, soiling yourself
because dream steps don’t
bring you any closer—I dream
to come home and travel in time
to be here, like standing in a
thrift store with things that
have jumped time, this sweater
escaping junk pile permanence
and leaping forward into now
with this glass or this record,
forgotten and alone but here and
ready to leap again, either to life
or the future in a Denver
thrift store or a Dayton Goodwill
with rows of color-coded clothes
milling from that into this,
one step at a time, dreaming of
living and dreaming at home:

You are crossing the date line and
the future is now, and coming home
you are walking into the past,
minute by minute until they
count it on the map and you
can wake up in the arms
appearing from new dreams
backlit by pacific waves for
asphalt lidded eyes




So Far Out of the World

Looking down from bald
lichen stained rock mountain--
that’s the world—between
me and the world, scrub, pine
and rock, and water around
the world

So far out of the world the wind
blows through my mind—I can
see it in a cartoon blowing from ear
to ear and the brains some old
dust added to the rest on these roots

In a patch of pine—the road
unseen, a blue bandana
found on the way to piss
where shielded from the wind
the last world is
silent, leaking--
loving this wild flow--
its ecstatic lines
dissipate

Something invisible runs
across the sea and over
this mountain to the north--
taking my dust with it,
my last civilization, my face,
my ways

how does a rock
survive--
fed by
lichens

darkness next to this



Bio: A multi-media artist living near Washington, DC, Jeff Bagato produces poetry and prose as well as electronic music, glitch video, sticker art, and pop surrealism paintings. Some of his poetry has appeared in Empty Mirror, Futures Trading, In Between Hangovers, Otoliths, Your One Phone Call, and Zoomoozophone Review. His published books include Savage Magic (poetry), Cthulhu Limericks (poetry), The Toothpick Fairy (fiction), and Dishwasher on Mars (fiction). A blog about his writing and publishing efforts can be found at http://jeffbagato.wordpress.com.