The Ofi Press Magazine

The Kansas Voice: an excerpt

 By Matt Porubsky (USA). Published in Issue 21.

A reality of touch. Begin to count the rocks

as you gather them, slip them

into the leather pouch around your wrist,

number them in your mind to serial my nature.

This can be felt in your hand, held with chalk specks

in palm-folds that carry like wind-songs

across veined distances.

These are my flints and slate.

                                                Sort each scent,

file them in the place hidden between primary

inhaled ideas and deep breathed contemplations.

These circling triggers of history are kept easy

in the birthplaces of thought, conceived factions,

soft separating memory.

            These are my selfing splits.

                        Collect with gentle hands:

views of weightless seeds, grits of topsoil blown

to tastes between teeth and tongue, nails and skin,

the glove-touch of slow streams, set lakes, the wind,

whistle calls of stalks, blades, limbs, trunks,

grains of landscapes.

        My variations of sea.

Phil Kelly: Alameda fuente   I   Óleo/tela   I   120 x 100 cm   I   1995