Tag: KG Newman

Two Poems by KG Newman

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The Stopwatch Gene

My father becomes gears
and during one of his
carefully scheduled visits
he whispers that
I’ll inherit the clocks
plus his short-listed days,
the ripples in the river,
trees wearing trench coats
in heavy Colorado snow.
This without any

particular brokenness
in his tone and a cold
downtown deserted,
nothing too early except
in our expectations
of a difficult talk, maybe
late into the night, while
raccoons spill a trash can
and we pretend
to not hear a thing.

*

Puddles

The air tasted like pennies
the rainy day I realized
blueberries are purple
and we weren’t gonna work.

Before that, we drove on thin roads
to rage rooms, where
sledgehammers could not help us.
Glass everywhere a reminder

of the present-past and how
we planted roses in random fields
only to occasionally drive by
and watch their various stages of wilt.

Someone must have tooth-picked
our air hoses — maybe us.
Maybe we are why the elixir is missing
from the liquor cabinet:

Our pathology inexact and the only things
we do know is both of our stethoscopes
were broken in a crash; we’ve been
kissing through a glass door.

The dogs ate our steak.
The path around the side of our house
circles back to the front. Inside the kids
are growing so quick and

the mouse trap is missing its marble.
Only a theophany can save us now,
our origin untethered from consequence,
a bright light from the sky

as our fragments get multiplied,
and again by zero, the fresh-cut trees
blessing an axe, the vines creeping
up our fence, lighting up, blowing

smoke rings, trying to tell us something.
Even our couches are sad. Our smart phones
turned anger lines. Our kids, adhesive.
Our hands meaning well but caught

in bicycle spokes, glistening with blood
under perceived sun so hot
it could melt us on the pavement
as the whole neighborhood watched.

*

KG Newman is a sportswriter for The Denver Post. His first four collections of poems are available on Amazon and he has been published in scores of literary journals worldwide. The Arizona State University alum is on Twitter @KyleNewmanDP and more info and writing can be found at kgnewman.com. He is the poetry editor of Hidden Peak Press and he lives in Hidden Village, Colorado, with his wife and three kids.

Two Poems by KG Newman

~ ONE ART ~ Leave a comment

Hot Rods

When the dragsters crash and burst into flames
with our love’s bad juju inside
the orange in the night sky reveals
the crinkled map where our past selves
are hidden. This is the next
testament: the footwork we’ve been working on

to jump with hope from the grandstand
down into the smoke. My love, there is no crater
like a crater of the soul. Perhaps the asphalt
can melt itself. Perhaps this cold
will pass. Perhaps the uphill shutdown
is not our harp after all.

*

My Time Dilation

I believed if I sweat, I could slow
the spin of the earth.

I figured the more hard-mowing,
the more moments of awareness,

and I thought an increase in jogs
through thinned parking lots

would preserve the mental movies
of my son learning to crawl.

I stacked my calendar. Had
another kid. Switched beer

for bench press and early-morning
pink incline hikes, where I

feared beads drying on
my temples when stopping

for drinks of water. With each
up-and-down I’d become

a little bit younger. I’d pause
the trajectory of the sun

to write down the exact
movements of a rabbit.

Use the dampness of my shirt
to delay my desiccation.

Collect my last sweat in a vial
to break later in my palm,

when I’m feeling off and like
a still, forgetful mortal.

*

KG Newman is a sportswriter who covers the Broncos and Rockies for The Denver Post. His first four collections of poems are available on Amazon and he has been published in scores of literary journals worldwide. The Arizona State University alum is on Twitter @KyleNewmanDP and more info and writing can be found at kgnewman.com. He is the poetry editor of Hidden Peak Press and he lives in Hidden Village, Colorado, with his wife and three kids.