Poetry

Gorgons

I have lived amongst creatures, delicate

yet hard as teeth. Honey and milk seeping

from mouths, sticking to our skin. Medusa,

fair maiden of Greece, we are all your three

sisters. How with a single glance each man

crumbled. Give us the stare Gods slit your neck

for, blood sweet with venom. Marble and stone,

grasping gold amidst glistening water,

snakes hissing at our necks. We make our nails

daggers, slash those envious of our being,

carve a trench into fleshy thigh, or for

The Year of the Tyrant 

Follows on the heels 
Of a half-dozen passes. 
It could easily stun 
Any one. 
It could easily scare 
Away the would-be years 

Speak, Father

I became ancient in my own lifetime, 
a life now splintered into anecdotes.

I've bent my wisdom toward the thankless task 
of getting money, piling up the filth.

My office has no window but the mail slot, 
a leering mouth with grime around its lips.

It's to this house of wax I nail my grievance. 
(I'm free to write this bile since none will read.)

Our forebears criticized this fallen nation 
to grant us license to dismantle it.

Arrival 
Every day I am running late. 
It means you stay, stay 
longer than others

a friend tells me. I 
like this friend. I wait 
for her at a café

even though we’ve made 
no plans to meet. I’m 
always waiting for people

it seems. Once, or maybe 
many times, I was waiting 
for a sentence to end

for so long I thought 
it never would, so I 
left. But then it did

and I was late again. 
My father says I used 
to be nice. My college

I first met Quenton Baker in La Conner, Washington when I attended a reading in an art gallery as a part of the Skagit River Poetry Festival. Quenton’s work was riveting. When he stood to read in his low melodic voice, the energy in the entire room shifted. His poems were a mix of high lyric and musicality with a powerful narrative and a deep intelligence that ignited the page and the audience.