Read More: A brief interview with Leland Seese
Time Travel
You call me all the way from Dingle,
worried I will never understand
the miracle of beehive huts
monks made by hand from
dry-stacked stones 14 centuries ago.
Inside, you say, the light glows
dimly, as if captured on the day
the first monk bent to prayer
beneath the tiny window,
benediction still and swift at once,
fleeting foretaste of eternity.
Your single sob travels from a pub
in County Kerry, to reach me in Seattle,
spanning the Atlantic and eight hours
and a continent.
I want to hold you, make oblation
for your tears. You say it’s always
been the same for fools and saints
who try to stay what vanishes
upon arrival, tearing palms and fingertips
on stone.
The Fourth Madness
In this world I lock out all my worries and my fears.
– The Beach Boys, “In My Room”
…but they do not understand their condition, because they do not clearly perceive.
(Plato, Phaedrus)
Fourth madness strikes, July 4th, 1970.
Teenage boy in bed,
tucked between himself and someone
else’s definition. Early morning
in his room,
somnambulant along the pathways
of his unexamined life.
Posters on the walls of ballplayers,
the Beach Boys, Raquel Welch.
Does he realize his wings are clipped?
Having been to unseen places in his dreams, […]
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Merely Human
My next-door neighbor is a zealous prostitute
who looks to me to guide her
in the art of managing her adolescent son.
We never talk about her work
when we talk across the fence.
I wonder what they make of it,
the passersby who see a Marilyn Monroe
in short-shorts, chatting up a graying gentleman, […]
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Leland Seese’s poems appear in Juked, The MacGuffin, The Stonecoast Review, and many other journals. He and his wife live in Seattle with a revolving cast of foster, adopted, and bio children.
Read More: A brief interview with Leland Seese