
Henry Stanton is a painter and a writer of poetry and fiction with a studio in Old Ellicott City, Maryland. His paintings, poems and fiction have appeared widely in print and online journals– most recently in Closed Eye Open, Door in The Floor, High Shelf Press, Poets Espresso Review and Tiny Seed Journal. His most recent published books include Moonbird, published by Cathexis Northwest Press and The Reluctant Spirit published by Holy & Intoxicated Press. The Way Thru, a book of poems, and The River of What Was, a book of short stories, are scheduled to be published in 2022. A selection of paintings, poetry and fiction can be found at www.brightportfal.com.
underside
your blue-black skin shines and you never age be through the dream through the dream you sigh into my ear as you settle down over me i will blanket you so you lose your mind you who thought you had become the one you are instead you are under me now pressed you whisper away your will go to sleep now moan the slow steady rhythm of your undoing its rise its fall bellows as you spread out and dilute yourself beneath me breathe finally so you are spent. We dissolve the will we dissolve it straddling agony and pleasure, here in the pale womb of the moon two primary colors collide, combine into some new gloaming, this room is suffused with its limited palette. , There the darkness in the room’s corner shines out with it; radiant something someone that is large bulging chant we lie together we live together chant forget about the rest of your loved ones who swell forget their menacing expansion I promise you they do not need you anymore.
HOW TO STEAL FROM RICH PEOPLE
Intoxicate yourself with purpose and leave drunken from their huge and brilliant puny house at night. Leave it behind. Abandon all sparkling fluids the musical insane laughter shimmering gowns that clinging. Back there, behind in the spinning room what remains of who you were. Follow the path to the retreating beach. Look the moon in its brilliant eye! It buries itself in the ocean depths and remembers. Remember who you are: What remains what memory the swirling foam Drowning. Give it all away. Sink to that love rise to that terror and repeat again a fleeting life in dreams.
FEVER TREE
The intrinsic longing in a dog's blacklipped grimace and in her ecstatic rolling. These luminous animal expressions flutter down in a sky that is raining jaguars. And the limpid tones of this edgeforest voice. To be quivering dark shadow that thrums among the luster of bright leaves. The meadow listens when it feels the thunder coming. Storm. Urge. Across the black bow of the river roaming, it is the night of treesway. Out there a god chants and twirls around and the moth clatters in a distant lantern. I keep searching for you. I keep finding you again, budding at night in the same wideopen field. There is not a single particle of you that repulses me never. I am always attracted always. How do I keep losing you? How do I find you? A shadow burns out across all those fields.
