Poetry by Joe Amaral
Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water.
After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. —Zen proverb
In the brooderhouse,
the farmer stares
at a digital clock
whose red slashes
smile
3:AM
He finishes
spinning clay,
squeezing wet bricks
out white barrels.
Wheel-throwing mugs,
vases, and candelabras.
Come daylight he tends
chickens, splits cords
of firewood and rides
a tractor over hose-damp soil
slow—plowing components
of his own grave. The kiln
fires a rainbow glaze.
Hardening wares
into quaint arrays
like war-torn flags
of misplaced countries
with mythical species. He noshes
fava beans by the potbelly
stove, feeding bits of kindling
and yellow newspaper
into the cast-iron surrounded
by cats and aged carpet,
Portuguese bull-riding posters
above cerulean sofas who sigh
blue dust in wistful comfort.
A black and white television
mewls at him, silver antennae
never straight enough
to combat the static. The farmer
closes his eyes, letting these creases
of a well-lived life
sculpture him in fine
undercoats of earth, hearth,
and feline purrs, the brooder-
house rooster alert
for the egg crack of dawn:
a sepulchral sunrise—
a malleable shape.
Joe Amaral’s first poetry collection The Street Medic won the 2018 Palooka Press Chapbook Contest. His writing has appeared in Anti-Heroin Chic, Last Leaves Magazine, Please See Me, Rise Up Review, River Heron Review, The Night Heron Barks, and University Professors Press. Joe works forty-eight-hour shifts as a paramedic on California’s Central Coast. He can be found on Instagram @joeticmedic.