Originally from Newark, New Jersey, Kyle Dargan is the editor and  founder of POST NO ILLS online magazine and an assistant professor  of literature and creative writing at American University. His debut  collection, THE LISTENING, was awarded the 2003 Cave Canem Prize  and his sophomore collection, BOUQUET OF HUNGERS, won the 2008  Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for poetry. Dargan's non-fiction has  appeared in The Newark Star-Ledger and TheRoot.com. His most recent  collection is LOGORRHEA DEMENTIA.

Purchase Kyle's books here. Check out POST NO ILLS here. You can read about Kyle's trip to China with the International Writing Program here,and read his article about Martin Luther King and Kyle's grandmother, a former Newark cop, here.

 

 

 

Karma
--en route, Indiana

On an open heartland road, silent of trees,
an ant falls from the sky onto my shoulder.
No iron wings or stretched pinions
for an eye's length, the sky is bare as a table cloth
awaiting dinner settings.

For some there is no egg--
no womb or pouch,
no amnion of rebirth.
They just drop from the horizon
like crates of rations
shoved off the curbs of paradise.

A black asterisk
crawls across the limbo of my white shirt.
Who were you, what is your
expired name--can you remember?
I'll call you Samuel,
brushing the ant from my sleeve,
christening it with the back of my hand,
as it floats down onto the weed-flanked asphalt.

originally published in Typo

No Passengers

        The already beautiful do not, as a rule, run.
        I am at the moment seated.
                                     —Donald Barthelme

Please remain beautiful in the event
of emergency. Keep all limbs

and loose dreams behind the yellow
line. The next train on this track

will not stop—doors will stay pursed
as a phalanx of wheels shrieks by. Again

this train will take no passengers
but I—scores of myself:

some with folios, some with pockets
full of music, some mosaiced

with uncertainty, some with gun barrels
clamped between damp waistbands

and the smalls of backs. Each me
related by motion more than quiddity

—we move. All desirous of up but
willing to settle for forward today.

Please remain beautiful
as this train passes—only gorgeous stasis

guarantees that the winds
from our escape will pith you

humane and clean. In departing,
we bequeath to you a final sight—

this smear of glass and steel flashed

like cellulose skimming a light unknown.