Joseph M. Gant is a scientific glassblower by trade but a writer by passion. His writing has appeared in
Mandala Magazine. Breadcrumb Scabs, Concise Delight, Ashé, Sex and Murder, and Lines Written w/ a Razor among others. He lives in the Philadelphia area with his family where he works on his novel and blows glass into alien-like laboratory apparatus. He holds degrees higher than 98.6.

i toss the glass
and toast the hours
- a velveteen stitched cross like knives -
ten o’clock groans of yesterday’s
mourning of tomorrow knit like scars  

the drunken couch now sails
oh where are you to put wind to me
i cry and tear at scenes at pens at pages
and at You but never on these fluids
do i find myself afloat

in a red shirt i sleep in dreams of angels
of the soul and find a dozing superintendent at my
cold wet feet as springtime births unfold
and fold again
and again unseen unknown
by the limpid soft decaying eyes beside

Josepsh M. Gant

He witnessed death
three times on the face of the day,
unrelated

1.
On the car ride there - a graveyard full of stones, dates, and names. Flowers of begotten sons and daughters lost, all upon a well trimmed field.

2.
On the car ride back - a shiny black procession, seventeen cars and a long, long. . .

3.
But for the fleeting glimpse of the in between there; between the coming and the going of the day, there never was and never will be such ceremony of remembrance - just broken father-to-have-been and a poem that has no subject to name.

Joseph M. Gant

Dolls’ eyes roll inside a candy dish,
Curious finger stirs the sweets,
Plucks delights, and one by one
Ruby lips and supple tongue
Make blindness of the joy that was
Never right nor of this world to
Make itself in daylight known
Where players lay their Queens and
Knaves - doubled down and folded.

Joseph M. Gant

Previously published in Sex and Murder