NATHAN MANLEY

Workweek Aubades

                                    I.
Salmonshine of the suburb in its frost-shingled crawl;
flank of the stegosaur, merged, ducking through creekwater.

                                    II.
Winterskin, my footsole. Pain roots the tableleg.
Chip-ice moon and, cirrus-flaked, breath gloats down the porch.

                                    III.
Gaslight blues the closet as our furnace kicks.
I’m tuned like a piano fork, listening.

                                    IV.
The glass-muted street. Earth on its pistons—
a streetlamp’s beam burns slats down the bedsheet.

                                    V.
Sunspasm up and nauseating.
The work is savage, unimportant.

                                    VI.
Valley of the night-warming plume,
the house with its stalactite breath.

                                    VII.
February. Rain browsing.
It hangs over and over. 

Nathan Manley is a poet, translator, and contracts attorney from Windsor, Colorado. He is the author of the forthcoming collection Native (Codhill Press, 2025) and of two chapbooks, Numina Loci (Mighty Rogue Press, 2018) and Ecology of the Afterlife (Split Rock Press, 2021). Recent poems and Latin translations have appeared or are forthcoming in Hayden’s Ferry Review, Spillway, Image, Portland Review, The Classical Outlook and others. His work has been nominated for Best of the Net and a Pushcart Prize. You can find his writing and instrumental music at nathanmmanley.com