Three poems by Nate Maxson

Altitude Sickness/ Sleight Of Hand  

The thin rising noise, I can feel it in my teeth

Like a Tibetan singing bowl

Struck so gently

What machinery speaks to me with such wide kindness? 

It’s barely a Pavlovian mannerism

A harmless riddle:

A bird when there is no bird

A wake when there is no dream

Absorbing the signal for such a long time can’t be healthy

It’s how the body fossilizes

How the magicians keep you watching





Locked Room Mystery 

So here’s the disappearance, strangers in the boiler room as the case may be

However quaint the notion may seem now

We can circle from this vantage point 

Hindsight and numerical superiority 

The kind that used to be popular entertainment

Watch,

The signal escapes us in the tunnel, here

Like a carnival ride, grab your sweetheart and close your eyes

The closest thing to a ghost we can find

Light and sound suspended like a bird of prey approaching

In this isolated space of the attenuated outside

What engine

What greased mechanism

But how did I know?

That outside

It was snowing





Enough Said The Glacier  

There’s enough furnace dust for everyone

Enough thirst

Enough, the musicality of French ambulance sirens

We believe in you

But slip up once and we will throw you to the cold 


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 Bio: Nate Maxson is a writer and performance artist. He is the author of several collections of poetry including 'The Whisper Gallery' and 'The Age Of Jive'. He lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

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