Peter Cashorali
Peter Cashorali
Peter Cashorali is a neurodiverse pansy living at the intersection of rivers, farmland and civil war. He practices a contemplative life. These poems (The Spider; The Standoff; The Ancients; The Dark; The Birds) are the attention of poetry paid to dreams, not to interpret them (though that's a good idea too) but to give them body. Dream them for yourself and see what meaning you make.
The Dark
When the dark comes, all the rules
Aren’t anymore, and anything.
Anything at all. Furniture
Can move around and lets us know
That it resents how we’ve compelled
It to stay all afternoon
(“So don’t expect no favors, pal”).
The dead are free to seek us out,
No more border where they’re stopped.
So many of them bear a grudge
Because we haven’t stayed in touch.
We’re naked when they look at us,
They freight us full of guilt and grief.
We’re nervous of the massive chains
They show of old relationships.
And the other ones appear.
What are they, monsters? Lots of teeth
And canny-eyed, aroused by us—
Our fleeing seems to give them speed
But to face them breaks our nerve.
We’re the prey they most prefer.
The way the landscape is in flux,
Crudely sketched or gone completely
Though that doesn’t stop the action.
It isn’t what we understand
But here we are, without a friend,
Trying to get through the dark
To the small well-lighted house
Which we hope please God exists
And has a door that we can shut.
Fingers crossed. In the meantime
We come back here every night
To practice being in this place
Because we know the time will come
When our eyelids just won’t lift
And we’ll have to deal with it.
The Birds
Now there were a lot of them,
Birds, I thought, but shaggy haired,
With Egyptian vulture heads,
Crested, and wings become forelegs.
There they were on all the flagpoles
Hopping forward one by one,
Black and heavy, nothing more
Than how we’d all be living now.
The kids came down the steps of school,
Already grim and used to them.
Who knew where birds like these came from
But here was where they’d all come to.
Something about how we lived
Made here with us their likely home.