Four Poems
Poetry by GTimothy Gordon
Fall Leavings
Dec-Jan 2025/26
Fresh tracks down flatlined Río by Juárez, Chihuahua,
borderland maquiladoras, derelict pickups, four-by-fours
up on blocks on what were Bigfoot balloon Goodyear
All-Terrains®, red-rusted, cherry-steel mag wheels,
aughts’ lowrider hydraulics some down from Española
that twerked The Humpty for aughts’ girlfriends,
now but slapdash memory of bottled-up brackish-black
river traffic idling, corroding, the banks of tee-shirt
and knockoff kicks’ sweatshops, curated muscle metal
once-weres, Mustang King Cobra, Plymouth ‘Cuda
426 Hemi, Jim Rockford’s ’78 Firebird Formula 400/
McQueen’s ’68 Mustang Fastback GT 390, a crush
of passive-aggressive El Caminos, any year, any hp,
big-ass, flat-out, fastmoving rides with cool, customized
Sissy Bar steering and retro lucky charm fuzzy dice
beyond the pale of teen memory without nuance or roar
or pseudo punk malice, silenced by the stagnant,
polluted pool of once free-flowing Río now and forever
blighted epitome that begs no dreamer’s pattern
of weathered summer nights.
Master Class in Plain English
These things astonish me beyond words.
-William Carlos Williams-
When cruising windswept-wet desert night
on black Bard-like or Emily Yorkshire Moors,
not looking for salvation or grace or answers
in Nature where none not found, like Lear,
Macbeth, growly Heathcliff in obsidian black,
bless inevitable dawns, go my everyday way
the way the GP from Paterson did in homes
of the poor, or those nearly so, at his rounds
without judgement or answer, and yet knew when
he brought his black bag back to the curbed Chevy,
writing script inside, ruminating, fumbling about
for what can’t easily be remedied in tough-nut cases,
mulling over what limited info provided about this
or that next case, knowing about colds, flu, babies galore,
and more, unlike quibbling academic discourse with
avant-garde Friday night auteurs and artistes of all stripe
across the Hudson, his lingo succinct, precise, American,
even now and then after midnight prancing before mirrors
as Flossie slept solo, scribbling script pads of lives that kept
his pecker up past dawn, and beyond, about Now,
the poor, “Paterson,” Paterson, all this poetry.
Homebound
Even in our most sanguine moments
when full flush mid-November moon
and sky-bloom blossom comfort spirit
with awful wonder, heartache, too, pain,
for sure, its god-sent unearthly sheer white
fluorescent Beyond pasted behind unknowable
black cutout desert mountain rock, something
like home for Frost, for most, the right place
for love, for few who question if mortal life
time out of joint, vale of tears, tasked to soul-making
gossamer fancy on suffering frequencies,
and, if none, what then? that place where you go
They must take you in, gates flung open when you
cash in all the chips, shards, gneiss and granite,
flint-and-whinstone for crash-pad mountain crag,
rolling your balls up-and-down cosseted endgame rock
in petrified air imagining yourself happy?
Night for Day
Night’s naked journey over endless sheets that make up a kind-of-life without overhyped poète maudit superannuated Parisian accoutrement opium absinthe bohemian Gauloises ou Gitanes fumées and no one except those who conduct the same un-thought-out outré business putting in the OT solo past the 9-to-5 grind know what’s about under starless moonless darkness even if this isn’t Montmartre Picasso’s La Vie still casting bread upon uncommodified waters worlds apart from ancient régime romantic daylight ancient regime compères’ Les Fleurs du mal or Illuminations commerce who too felt that same catatonic all-night-long drafty business over and over before becoming something other than what we never knew we were or felt that came anyway trailing no celebratory clouds of glory merely
Decà, delà/…à la/feuille morte discarding pompous sumptuous bon mots like lovers that come-and-go tracking me down but haply not that far polished-off hot wet and fetid in protracted night air humbling waking morning flesh in sackcloth and ash sheen.
BIO: GTimothy Gordon’s work appears in AGNI, Cincinnati R, Mississippi R, New York Q, RHINO, Texas Observer, among others, several nominated for Pushcarts and Best of the Net. Recent books include EMPTY (2024), BLUE BUSINESS (2025), and KNOWING, in-progress. DREAM WIND was published 2020 (Spirit-of-the-Ram), GROUND OF THIS BLUE EARTH (Mellen), while EVERYTHING SPEAKING CHINESE was awarded RiverStone Book Prize. Gordon divides lives between New Mexico/Texas borderland Chihuahuan Desert Southwest Organ Mountains and Asia.