Feelings are Rooms

Roberto Tejada

After Kabir Carter, Bard College, 26 June 2018

Feeling knives the microphone to cauterize flesh it amplifies

Crackles the abrasive metal fabric

Blowtorches feedback hold and heel

Throttles and pauses the cord-pull

Lulls to lunge in transmission back seat pocket

Alones the sound crowd

Accumulates the solitary intention of hooded jacket front punch

Zippers the match stick ignite

Handcuffs the thick slide probe with plastic tie

Zones between foot and huddle

Shrills the retreat from acted upon or was it repeat

Tools the self animation

Insomuch as the metal scrim

On denim is able to inhale

Skin-howl blister swipe

Caresses and so abrogates as to grip therefore

Larynxes stride and light step

Dry touch enveloping to self anoint

Tag identify anatomy pulse

Whether pleasure or pain it collapses

Second human shell the cosmos

Automaton guest or X

Feeling that ligaments today in predation

It houses it afflicts it encircles

Freestanding Form

[after Betye Saar]

Clock tower directive with a stopwatch Oath moan
status of a kitchen ladle brandished in one hand
grenade in palm grip of the other

Cushion combat thumb and wrist Homeland
shown enthralled of markets imploded also
by declassified fears my heroic

former name for someone else In household
wanted list discarded figure where it fits
to line the inside of a coral box

Roberto Tejada

2022

Baraka Inscape

Not so for my republic nothing left of rule
Nothing left of rule over the salvage self

by way of weapon to sing in sovereign song
no more composed in courage than most

No more than most myself save nothing is
befitting the field with as many futile

stockpiles of opinion so moved to moving
with derision or memory’s abortive

little heap after what I did to injury
Rooms still cold with the stroke of it

Still wreckage a resource like flesh
imputing fingers or lips I made stiller

Roberto Tejada

2022

American Household

Here I’m untethered, or else this American household is.
A shame for guest and resident alike, torn asunder,

Immovable, unmoving, horizon line before it closes
On the embankment, which is too a slowing thunder.

Whether cash & cake were meant for us the undeserving
Is a frenzy of thought, an amusement from the spoils

Of corporation able to outweigh the will unnerving
All restraint from the madness or immodesty that coils

Each milligram back into the sky blue oxy addiction
McKesson, Cardinal Health & AmerisourceBergen

Roberto Tejada

2022

Poems

Feelings are Rooms

More by this poet

Freestanding Form

Baraka Inscape

American Household

Poems

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Feelings are Rooms

More by this poet

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