Four Poems

By Isaac James Richards

NIGHT TERRORS

Typically, they occur fifteen minutes

after we turn out the light. My body

waits for them now, tense in anticipation.

Sooner or later, she bolts upright

beside me, her spine as taut as a bow,

eyes piercing the darkness and the veil

that shrouds this world from others, from

spirits, from dangling spiders swarming

fleas and male intruders, some masked,

wielding guns. Some nights, the house

is on fire. Other nights, flooding. Still

sometimes, the flash of a headlight

through the window, becomes a siren—

an alarm of some kind, rising in pitch

like her full-throated scream, shattering

lightbulbs, leaving shards of glass

on the sheets. Then there’s the second

start, when my hands reach out to comfort—

to grope in the dark, but always startle

first, send her quivering away, convulsing.

Slowly, I coax her awake, but her heart rate

is the last thing to slow. Once, by the light

of the full moon, I saw sweat like dewdrops

on her breast, heaving as if giving birth—

pushing out some nine-month growing fear

that emerges draped in blood. But I know

that these dreams are no vampire: trauma is

both cause and effect, and anxiety dares

not leave us vulnerable to more rational fears

when there are so many more shadows

to battle and fantasies to subdue. Our bodies

worry that the world isn’t scary enough

without our minds to keep them guessing.

HIMALAYAN MEDITATION

Today / you will experience / all four (blurry) seasons

and the (incomplete) circle / of life. Get comfortable

on a warm stone / the near vertigo of the slope / leaning

like a markhor / your guru to this guise of symmetry

horns spiraling like a helix of DNA / illusion / of bearded

wisdom and confidence—he’s frantic / agile between

paradoxes but always precarious / like meaning / perched

next to the golden eagle / about to pluck the markhor’s

offspring from the rock / and toss it into the glacial river

of oblivion / unnumbered / the spots on a snow leopard

are a camouflage mirage of the sublime (beauty and terror)

stripping meat from horn to hoof / leaving spots of blood

in the snow / her flexibility as admirable as poetry / as

contingent as the grip of her paw or maw / succumbing

to age and entropy / dying / alone / in a cave / where moths

will have the final say: a mouthful of delightful words

dissolving like dust on microscopic tongues that live for

a single day / when / more than atoms are eternal.

SPELEOLOGY

Toss pebbles of words down the caverns of memory and see what you find. You cannot write

without polishing them further, without chipping off a chunk. Things that accumulate drip by

drip suddenly appear terrifying, a grotesque shadow carved by light, glistening with growth and

germs. In the maw of recollection, teeth are not just stalactites, but pillars to your palace of wet,

white darkness. Sounds live here, as does silence. Note the striking similarity between echoes

and mirrors, both bouncing and reflecting like a shallow pool. You think all this fits inside you,

inside your head—gray and glistening—but really, you are the one who is surrounded, bumping

blindly against the cold, slick walls, hands outstretched, seeking an entrance, or exit. Remember:

light and sound are two sides of the same coin, falling down the same well to splash and sink like

experience in the winding recesses of oblivion. Then, gradually seeping, matter starts to matter,

like meaning peeping from the pores, expanding to fill the empty space of consciousness with the

endless humming of thought.

EXPECTATIONS

I was in a hurry when I paused to answer the phone in the vestibule. Why did the call drop at

exactly that very instant? If they weren’t glass, I would have blamed the walls. Perhaps I had

stepped just out of WiFi range, but my cell service is supposedly “unlimited.” If everything goes

according to plan. Unless I’m roaming. Unless the vestibule was a sort of twilight zone,

unreachable by signal tower, impenetrable to sound and light and other invisible waves. As my

eyes glanced up and around, from screen to surroundings, the doorhandle said what if I locked

right now, and the floor said what if I dropped right now like a Tower of Terror elevator, and the

ceiling said what if I came down as a trash compactor, and the windows said what if we

shattered, and the carpet said what if I could fly, and the phone went blank, as if to say I gave up,

as if to say it’s too hard, as if the attempt to connect two voices, two hearts, two souls, across

time and space, was something we shouldn’t take for granted, as smooth as pressurized hinges

swinging to a gentle clasp behind me, heading down the hall, just passing through, unseen.