Two Poems by Jim Davis

Physiognomy
def: the art of discovering
temperament & character
from outward appearance: smile

lines, baggy eyes, woman of my dreams
I don’t sleep so I can’t find her, copper
pennies worn  down by a tongue the color
of new ways of employing time-

honored processes, which is in its utmost
a secretion of Spanish news into sweet
dreams are made of peas pushed around
in an oil slick plate, where an egg white

clouds & rain argues like a stomach
of peas. Remember the days when we wanted
to know what we’d look like in the future?
Remember when I stood in the dirt, where

everyone walked? Everything looked like poem
dust. Those were the days of raw & rampant
sentiment. The whole thing owed to moments
of certainty. Sediment, apprentice of the world

mowing grass in rows: stripes catching light
in one direction, then another –
we should be so grateful.

12:12 < 11:11
.                       Who was king of that world we forgot
we owed money to, money too in the breathless
.  silence in which together we live. Great supposition
ensues. In certain of my minds, dreams, your eyes
.  aren’t green at all but some amalgamation, muted
reflection of fire and blood – those you avoided
.  then desired, avoided again. Who were you, cruel
lovetap, glinting in some nominal cast at the silver forge
.  to dangle from collar bone, earlobe? I’m sure you are
too unissued to pull Neil apart – Young not Diamond –
.  enigma of the disembodied songster, young one, not us,
young buck cutting through the forest goes and fucks

.  until his antlers grow and get stuck between two
sentences. Unwritten messages between predictions
.  are all you should crack up to be, where you’d best
invest your savings – liminal stock is the only guarantee,
.  lock jaw and barrel through dry walls, any other wall
will resist. The old grape cough syrup container has
.  clouded – in your dreams you pull harder, find me, wish
for proper signals to engorge – then the king appears –
.  pull again and you’ll sleep for good, he will tuck you in,
leave a glass of juice at the bedside, he will pardon
.  your debts, you think, although he’s already collected: sock
drawer, silver earring, unwrapped prophylactics, sack of teeth.

About the Author
Jim Davis is an MFA candidate at Northwestern University. His work has appeared in Wisconsin Review, Seneca Review, Adirondack Review, Midwest Quarterly and Contemporary American Voices, among many others. Jim lives, writes, and paints in Chicago, where he reads for TriQuarterly and edits North Chicago Review.