The Gorko Gazette

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5.30.2026 6:55 AM

The Poppy Runner and 1 more by Damon Hubbs

The Poppy Runner

Somehow practically infinite
Red in tooth and claw and all that
I’d argue that these modernist novels are a thing of the past
We spent the day in the park eating figs
and drinking bright cans of Cola
The wind like a widow with a gun
and much can be said about the blue carnage of the sky,
the clouds flaunting brass, the gold at the bottom
of the lake. No, no. This isn’t normal life.
Best selling nostalgia and even the crappiest crack
can ruin your face.
And this is before we saw the poppy runner
and the Merlin Bird ID
caught the song
of a Yellow-crowned Night Heron
in the middle of the afternoon
which you said was kinda like the UK
officially leaving Europe.
Fair enough. There’s no simple solution.
Youth starts with the eyes of a horse
and the rest, come Tuesday, doesn’t exist
at all.

Birds and Saints

I dare my lovers with birds and saints.
I dare my lovers with an eye for an eye for an eye.
The ferryman says morrow morn without a hint of irony.
Out past the skerries of Mount Desert Island, we spook
and shoot. The waves like a corridor of mirrors.
I dare my lovers to cry softer.

A bird and a fish may fall in love, but where would they live—
I have no expectations or bicycles for the courier.
The sun pulls its hair back like an old flame.
It started with an Atlantic Puffin
and the seven sorrows of the State Liquor Store.
What’s the range of vagrancy for a Guadalupe Murrelet?

I dare my lovers with birds and saints,
country miles of lobster towns carved like bathtubs.
Footing a tan or strapped to the mast, O
be easy. I’m the kneeling knight joking about phantom limbs.
Cranberry Isles is 10 cm dilated. Playback that part about love,
the territorial response before the sirens of the wood.

About the artist

Damon Hubbs is a poet from New England. His work has appeared in Hobart, Bruiser, Horror Sleaze Trash, The Literary Underground, HAWKEYE, and others. He is the author of the poetry collections Nighttime Logic and Venus at the Arms Fair.