"Corpse Pose" and "Sun Salutation," two poems by Dobby Gibson
Hot Vinyasa Flow for Crushing Self-Doubt
Corpse Pose
The position has to assume you,
like a fever, or a favor, or a black hole
swallowing its own ballistics report.
Like trying to believe you deserved
even a single afternoon
two years ago, with an old friend
ascending the micro-climates
of Pacific Heights eating oysters.
Your jail cell is made of harp strings.
Nothing deserves your skepticism
more than a mirror.
If you start here, in the middle,
then any progress will grant you
both a beginning and an end.
Open and close your eyes
and sweep the front porch of your face.
Standing on the moon, you’d weigh
less than a toddler
where the extended forecast
calls for no weather at all
and the coffee tastes like sand,
so best to admire the majestic from afar.
You don’t have to believe
your own story,
you simply have to believe
you’re the only one who can tell it.
Instead of deleting the digressions,
erase the precedents. Beware of any wolf
who goes still.
Sun Salutation
It’s the needlessness to this mess that makes it feel so endless,
and unlikely
I’ll live long enough to know why.
I love what you didn’t do with the place.
All the regrets
cross-matrixed to failures,
the piano there to hold up the family portraits,
the pink apple blossoms falling to the sidewalk
as if to destroy us,
like a wildfire jumping a break.
The alley to the road to the capitol runs through me,
and the preposterous,
and in the end, I got exactly what I had coming,
there must be some misunderstanding
say it with me, there must be some misunderstanding.
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