R.T. Castleberry
R.T. Castleberry is a widely published poet and critic. His work has appeared in Roanoke Review, Trajectory, White Wall Review, Steam Ticket, The Alembic, Silk Road and Misfit. Internationally, Castleberry’s work has been published in Canada, Wales, Ireland, Scotland, New Zealand and Antarctica. Mr. Castleberry’s work has been featured in the anthologies, Travois-An Anthology of Texas Poetry, TimeSlice, The Weight of Addition and Anthem: A Tribute to Leonard Cohen. He lives and writes in Houston, Texas.
An Animal or a God
Paint glistens yellow in the night rain,
dark Bacardi pours easy over ice.
Like the ghostly colonials of Apocalypse Now–
lost to France, dying in Vietnam,
I’m stranded in this tiger wilderness.
Half-awake, sleep leeched by dread sense,
I avoid the sun, seal doors and blinds against
mutations of neighbor noise, music’s call.
My watch hangs from the hilt of a knife
embedded in a photo frame.
I’ve lost my image in shanks of mirror.
Locating sectors that comfort and secure,
I squat between bed and wall.
The knock at the door is
my widowed lover with a pipe or
a summary of sins to date.
I rise from ready crouch to respond.
Sheila-Na-Gig online 