Poetry By C Derick Varn

C Derick Varn is a poet, teacher, and theorist.  He
currently edits for Former People and is a reviewer for the Hong Kong
Review of books. Originally from Georgia, he currently abides in Utah,
but his nomadic tendencies have found him living in Cairo, Egypt,
various places inSouth Korea and Northern Mexico.  He lives with his
wife, and a bunch of books, and writes at night. He has published in
Danse Macabre, Writing Disorder,  JMWW,  Clutching at Straws, Xenith,
Piriene’s Fountain, Nebo, Yes, Poetry!, and many other venues.


An Accidental Field of Relations


If I asked you to come as far as the shores

of my blood, then dive-in, swimming like

platelets caught in capillary currents:


our bodies are who we are, yet their

grow untrimmed, turning against ourselves,

metastasizing cells and lungs deflating.


Walking the river, I see mud collapse

from the banks, turning the river brown,

for a second the sun catches the surface


and it the whole scene turns into blood

and fire.  I will cue in the lines in the supermarket,

holding back tears, palming a diet soda,


two safety razors, two tins of aspirin. Nothing

seems to matter but nebulous love: stripping

down of the rough layers, like peeled sugar


cane, the wires of the peeler sometimes

snagging a finger, cleaning the skin off into

the woody pulp in the bottom floor. Sweetness


comes with a price paid in the blood, the stars

will splash into the arteries, we are star debris

but so is all the flotsam in the river, in the veins,


in the corpse we call love, scars showing our

healing, and, in field of accidental relations: we

will saw each other in half, suture ourselves,


waiting for the moment to give it one more time

with feeling, one more stitch, one more kiss.




After The Laughter


then there was the command line

and stones replaced broken tongues,

but ugly ducklings remained ducks,

swans remained aggressive,

dross remained the droll remains

of burnt forests, I remained walking

in hatred with the abyss beneath

my feet, smoke still rose up from

funerals pyres, the poet was still

oft interrupted, love still oft injured,

hemp rope still frayed after tying

too many lovers, the pure souls

remain uncannily vicious, icebergs

still sank ships, the Parthian Empire

remained dust, Kalashnikovs are still

cheap on the black market, women

still accidentally bled on my cotton

sheets, the bandage still pulls

the scabs with it, you can't hear the

screams, but you'll still know they're

three. There is still darkness

that ebbs away but does not

die even after a few jokes.




Another Love Letter Smeared on Tissue Paper

-for T.


Idols hasten bruised knees:

eat the supper of self.  A woman


turns in her bed; a man bleeds

on a pillow, carving out the space


for another—the scalpel

whittled into decorative


bone.  She smiles as she

takes him in, piece


by piece.  He is already supped

on her, leaving her cold and lithe.


They write each new in a mangled

language to sung in moans.


The line is thin.  The habit of hope

which saints peddle in marriage


beds, mostly feeds the bed bugs.

Bowing to take each other in,


like matins, like gore glutted teeth.

The fingers will divorce the hands,


the breast will bind the mouth.

Like them, I have an taste for


ambiguity, your teeth

honed for stranger sighs,


we both hunger for blood

and bruises, immutable.