mouth of youth
once fortuitous
salt-flat, settled in
decay, early verdancy,
the flourishing swamp
lands, the smoke
bellowing floor-bed,
the bloomed booming,
receding, its figure de-figuring
the fountain floating
like a scalp, half-balded
in a buzzard’s
eye view, torn like
an exonym
from a back-
bone, blue
and so what if the pelicans
said you can’t move skeletons
in your mouth? you’ve grown
no trees dead and hold living
groves of men in the back-fumed
sacrifice of your singing throat.
[the waves know your sculpting—bones bound to boat]
the trunk barks. the sharks smoke.
we were but fat seals basking before anarchy, broke.
south
on the brink of salinas
the sky starts to turn itself south:
king city — los angeles
the sun-stung metal of mouth.
grin of the grill, skin of the grape,
echoes from the superdome we co-created in the valley.
somewhere on the snake road
between mountain and escape,
scattered documents spread testament
of the dream’s reaching prowess
& we thirst for the salts the oceans promised.
lucid lust in the wastewaters,
we can’t help but keep
seeing ourselves in —
Casey McAlduff reading: mouth of youth
Casey McAlduff reading: untitled poem beginning “and so what if the pelicans”
Casey McAlduff reading: south
Casey McAlduff is a poet and high school Humanities teacher living and working in Oakland. She received her MFA in Creative Writing from Saint Mary’s College in 2012. Casey also co-curates the Studio One Reading Series at Studio One Arts Center, one of the longest running reading series in the Bay Area.