by Raymond Gibson

Between the Clock and Bed by Edvard Munch

a spidery dread threads these lines
as if the hand inscribing
were only bones

the desk is undisturbed the clock
hands never touch their face

rooms slowly inure to
my absence
like skin to the feel of clothes

I want to leave signs of a struggle

but watch
even this tea-colored ink efface

*

the moon strikes twelve from
its glass box

I straddle two days in its chime

it’s not the bed but the dark
it’s not the clock but
the ticking
the ticking dark what frightens

*

between self and portrait in
a dyslexia of mirrors

imagine a house whose doors
have the rhythm
of a heart now emptied imagine

a self-portrait sans self or portrait

a transparent man points down
with one hand while frowning

*

bed where I will spend
one-third of my days winding up
my heart’s clockwork

bed wrapping itself up in my shed
skin like a blanket
of newly-fallen snowflakes

*

the bed is empty and mirrors only
portray our longing not ourselves

I ask what lasts of those outlived
neither of us can truly say
what was I
what was I now that I’m gone

the pendulum wags its finger
from the floorboards’ waxy sheen

***

Raymond Gibson is a graduate of the creative writing MFA program at FAU. He won first place in the Florida Community College Press Association Magazine Competition of 2003 for best poem. His work can be found in the May/June 2009 issue of Oak Bend Review, the Tiny Truths section of Creative Nonfiction 39 and 41, the July/Aug. 2011 issue of THIS Literary Magazine, and the Sept. 2011 issue of Four and Twenty Poetry. He lives in Hollywood, FL.

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