In The Lab After Work

June 13, 2025 Kevan Copeland

In The Lab After Work

It is unloosed!
A microorganism, once
captive, deflecting light.
That crafty impulse
avoiding truth.
Little virus, evil isotope—
fugitive from the microscope
evading diagnosis
as I am
eluding you. Eyes

Spiral your design, flowering
round the edge of the Petri dish:
necklace of streptococci,
stray beads of staph. I spot
you: a molecule of thought.
Now it is gone,
losing itself in my brain
encased by a meningitis
of mind. You have infected a life,
and all writing of me is by us.

A version of this poem appeared previously in Strip Mall Magazine.

Actress

June 6, 2025 Kevan Copeland

Actress

You are my movie.
I am moving you
out of your backdrop
of husband and dysfunction.
Step off of domesticated blue
and into my electric Technicolor
vision. A stylist devises you

A trim easily tossed
in my direction. I frame you
in long take, jump cut, wrapped
in ennui against city, cliffs, carnival.
Finally—uninterrupted sky, hard
against your soft shifts in expression.
At the cinematheque, we watch you.

My words in your grip, you are pure
fiction rewriting my design,
manipulating my forms, performance
directing my edits: glance
at once blank and masking
roiling passion, your artistry
unmatched and unfairly uncredited.

Find Your Appetite

May 25, 2025December 20, 2025 Kevan Copeland

Find Your Appetite

Dancing shoes tap you
to a vacuum of newness.

Samples advertise, serve
in satellite dishes. Shoppers

In waterless
synchronous swim

Peruse aisles of hieroglyphs
eyeing furious calm. Witness

The blossom of atomic
energy in an asterisk!

The cashier is beaming,
teeth screening television.

Her fingernails click, flash
illuminated cuticles.

Folds of fiat cash
close in an open palm.

Organics are electric and music runs
clear. Reheat. Release. Appear.

A version of this poem appeared previously in Strip Mall Magazine.

Obsession

December 4, 2022 Kevan Copeland

Obsession

Life under your eye
is bleary. Business
handshakes
have no business
touching me,

In your view. All touching
gestures are suspect.
I’m not to trade
a laugh, or love
anybody else.

Winding through a city
afternoon, experience wears
a weary glaze. I must
wonder if it’s being
watched. Now, after

All you’ve drained, here
is something real: it’s not
my image hanging
in the lining
of your mind; it is a void.

Bump, Set, Spike

November 20, 2022 Kevan Copeland

Bump, Set, Spike

Someone volleyed the moon
above a distant net. Intuitively
knees bent, ready, as learned
in gymnasium days.

Rising hands aim at delay
of conscious rays, adding
few minutes to golden
hours. Pause, rewind. Replay

Slow motion approaching of toes
whisking sands to volcanic flash.
Athletic memory melts
horizons behind the eye.

Somebody serves the moon
illumination. I leave
fingertips of playful trees grazing
games that should have been.

Amoral Ice

November 12, 2022 Kevan Copeland

Amoral Ice

Avalanche! From the inverted
cup to a querying

face. The vertex
observes an unbroken

focus, ignoring abuse
from querulous cubes. Fingers

twist a cold telescope
probing Arctic altitudes—

streaming a floe
past enamel, now Andromeda

dropping—the esophageal
pull. The infusion of cool

moves the skeleton
to eject a wintry “Ah!”:

opening intergalactic
gush. Here, imbibing

among the stirring
of planets, the atmosphere is fresh.

Seagull Attack

November 5, 2022 Kevan Copeland

Seagull Attack

Suddenly, something went
for the head, and I
turned German
Expressionist, elongated
and aged in a vicious splatter
of American Abstract.

Through swoops, batter
and blur, I saw claws
scratch and extract
thick pigments, interrupting
watercolour assumptions
in my innocuous walk.

I think, observing
in furious whites
and occasional yellow
frenzies of angle and edge,
was a visionary eye
crafting something undone.

Now the physician is finishing
the image with pointillist
tracks, splashing tetanus
vaccine through avenues and cracks;
and as representation, when I am seen
I am more accurate than I have been.

Spring Explosive

July 31, 2022 Kevan Copeland

Spring Explosive
*after Dalí, and Eiseley

For a frost, offspring
of a sunrise is corrosive,
while turmoil of a kernel beautifies
to violence. A chrysalis

Liquefies cracks to knives,
striking psychedelic petals. Burning
dyes intertwine a pulsing
green that drives the season

To kinesis. Inside a pod,
an upthrust grasps what thrives,
spuming: fruit and flower
subsume an epoch. Storming

Chlorophyll balms the crust
of unclothed globe. Colossal
palms warm to holding
life, divining: into form.

An Artisan

July 23, 2022July 23, 2022 Kevan Copeland

An Artisan

The persona is a bruise,
not a self. It builds
being via craftsmanship.

Structure covers lack
of formation—scaffolding
camouflages decoration.

The body ages, contains
something young—
in him performs

The play
of discipline and inspiration.
Calloused, grasping

Is now granting
shape: into fabrication.
Construction is cacophonous:

Beams pirouette
before steeling; a father
once latent, now testing.

Nuclear Dive

July 4, 2022August 11, 2022 Kevan Copeland

Nuclear Dive

Reactor, your rods
flicker and slither—hair
beguiling me, swimming
in spent fuel. Refusing
perimeters, I want an excitement

Dosimeters read. Your criticality
initiates frisson; I risk
beta burns, dodging
your doses
strewn throughout cooling

Cherenkov
hues—though I’m losing
acuity. Why am I
diving, reaching? Am I
an Ama, searching

For Japanese pearls? Am I
a Fukushima girl
caught in a seiche?
No, I’m whorled into your
geisha chicanery,

Pool of blue fabrics winding
to you. What is the core?
A murderous thrust, a phosphor
essence I’d forgotten I knew
in me, before you.