APRIL POETS

The Shad Run

By

Edward Rinaldi

there is beauty in
the madness of their driven swim
up nearly the entire length
of the hudson river
all the way to first lock ghosts

where melville and his
whaler ship dreams
chanced a portal entrance to
where the engine of money
was being remade into
an industrial ply of shaped clay
in all the slow alchemy of freight

barges here spin-weight time
at each spawn turn of a wheel
coal chutes and load docks
and penning words
to bear children in
the small presses of memory

we bank smells near Spring
where there is always
lingering in the tied tithes of nets
the way a river catches everything
we know our bleeding was meant for

Like fireflies Waiting 

By

Edward Rinaldi

when we turn
someone’s mind on
our flesh always follows
in breathless event
horizon falls to where
the darkness is
our light when called

and when swallowed through
to the other side of new
to the tided afterbirths
in the stars fade
that already knew
we would be there
in any moment

wading the crackle
the electric whip-snap
the turn to nourish
in an angler fish fed flourish
the slowest kind of biting sin
the instant we can complete ourselves in
a circuit of our wants and our sates
wired between our choices and our fates