The Skinny One

By Charles Rocha

A short-but-compelling collection of experimental poems on various themes.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Charles Rocha
• Release date: Oct 17, 2017
• ISBN: 9780463560778

Charles Rocha

Charles Rocha is a graduate of Central Washington University in Ellensburg, Washington, with a B.A. in English and an M.A. in British Literature. Currently he works as an ESL instructor in the city of Dnipro, Ukraine. He has had stories and essays published in small journals and online story websites.

Book preview

The Skinny One

The Skinny One

A Collection of Poems

by Charles Rocha

Copyright 2017 Charles Rocha

Published by Charles Rocha at Smashwords

ISBN 9780463560778 (epub edition)

Cover image: Edvard Munch – Woman’s Head Against the Shore, 1899

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your enjoyment only, then please return to Smashwords.com or your favorite retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Contents

Preface

Dixie

Index Finger Painted Red

Melissa

For Edna Purviance

For Edna Purviance (Variant 1)

For Edna Purviance (Variant 2)

A Winter Change in April

Winter in April

Post-Cinderella Regret

The Tale of Brave Strumpus

Los Angeles

Sixteen

Swan Lake

No Way Out

Courage

The Conjuration

Small Gifts

Acorns

Perversity in Samsara

Tattoo

Tranquilo

Corrections

Muse

Diary

Samsara

Winter Days

The State of Computing in 1995

The Affair

You Talk Too Much

Dried Apricots

Making Love

Making Love (Variant)

Thank You

Media

Wristwatch

Static: F-Troop on an LSD Vacation

Naked Before the Mirror

The Challenge

I Was Weary

Time Has Eased My Troubled Mind

Annotated Bibliography

About the Author

Other Books by this Author

Preface

Dear Reader,

You have in your possession a skinny volume of poems written by someone who does not consider himself a poet. This uneven collection was written over the course of twenty years and constitutes the whole of my poetic output during that time. I do not consider these poems my best work, and today I am publishing them only for the sake of posterity. All the same, I would still be pleased if you enjoy them.

Charles Rocha, 2017

Dixie

By boot, hoof, wagon wheel, and sail,

young men with guns went south when ink had failed.

They’d left their mother’s arms or wives at home

to hide behind a barricade of stone.

A bugle cries; a corporal gives the word

as men charge into fields and rifle shot,

they fall like petals in a garden plot.

Thunderous roar, balls from cannons fly

through soldiers’ cries.

Between the muddy ditch and caisson ruts

a soldier clutches his bleeding guts.

The shifting lines on battlefields are drawn

by tactical maneuver:

the stench of sweat and terror,

the screams of boys beneath the surgeons’ saw.

The bells peel harshly in a Richmond square.

When the Union army gathers there

her shamed-yet-proud, defeated people,

lower Dixie from the steeple.

Atlanta’s flames light up the countryside,

the falcons fleeing from their nests.

Starvation buries some who have survived.

Yet war-worn Sherman and his company,

befitting agents of adversity,

darken the sky with swaths of cotton soot

above the hungry calm

while caissons roll along

on grain fields mashed to mud by Union boots,

and whole Southern regiments

are regiments of