Maxwell Rabb
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GARDEN’S ORBIT
Soft heat flattens our field
viscous before daily chores
fogged rural mimicry
inside wooden fences
New routines by the whirl wheel.
Danced hardwood
covered in old shattered mirror
beneath the porchlight
myosistic metal awnings
and bronze roots squashed under my palms.
Look above!
An eye fractured by fabric strands
a scythe
cut
of evening primroses
propped by
a sponged planet
viscous gnats
barren termites
All rebounded as tensile limbs
in swinging indium blades
steers eyes shoulders to the sun
Nascent voices burst as desert spoons fold in–
and the malleable sun is stored by steeples
and the malleable sun is burning the soil–
DECRYPTION, OCEAN
the daylight gash
lured by steel tidewaters
stumbling blue weather
patterned songs of
baritones and eventides
where my throat muscle
pastes opaque letters to
punctured silences from
white bellbirds where
my voice is tuned by
an iron alloy
this August i spend on
waxed water
burning soot and prying
open ribbons like
taut coils called by a
sequenced crash site
spires and spores
my metal head grinds
from a viscous carousel
heated by the boiling
polished ocean
and this September
a bell buzzing cold front
where i play a deflated
joke sunglazed by
porous voices
Biographical Statement
Maxwell Rabb is the author of the chapbook Faster, the Whirl Wheel (Greying Ghost, Forthcoming 2023). He lives in New York City, leaving his heart in New Orleans, Chicago, and Atlanta. His poems have appeared in the Action Books Blog, Tagvverk, Mercury Firs, and Apogee, among others. He completed his MFA at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He co-edits GROTTO.