SurVision Magazine
An international online magazine
that publishes Surrealist poetry in English.
Issue Fourteen
CHARLES BORKHUIS
From "Point of No Return"
* * *
when was it I looked away
and turned into you
half-a-century in a moment's lapse
fiddling with one's shoe
one ties a schoolboy's knot
into an infinite eight
and time is stretched
through a prismatic shadow
an aging body floats decades away
ripples of interference
overlapping waves fall back on us
footprints mumbling in the mud
the star I am staring at
disappeared light years ago
shake my hand and it comes off
at the wrist don't look now
but the fingers appear to be signing
to us or is it just me
take the hand home if you like
put it in a jar for safe keeping
* * *
stranger to yourself you are never
completely here when it happens
but observing events from a gauzy distance
the now never quite present enough
leaves a trail of clues in the larva
soon to spread its wings and take flight
he was always on a case inside a case
investigating the mystery of a memory
passing itself off as the real
a phantom limb that breaks
into hollow pieces
the blanks filled in by a narrator
from nowhere that offers
to take you for a ride
* * *
who doesn't know he's already dead
a missing body hovering
around an open grave a mouth
gurgling for air
how many syllables does it take
to fill in the blanks between us
hidden to oneself
one remains circling
the frozen pond marked
with swirls and spirals
waiting for a new body to inhabit
the inexplicable moment
when one life becomes another
or spins off into space
Charles Borkhuis is a poet, playwright, and essayist born and raised in NYC and currently living in San Diego. His eleven collections of poetry include Savoir-Fear (Spuyten Duyvil, 2003), Disappearing Act (Wave Books, 2014), Dead Ringer (BlazeVOX Books, 2016), and Rearview Mirror (BlazeVOX Books, 2022). His poems and essays have appeared in numerous journals and magazines including Jacket 2, Brooklyn Rail, Marsh Hawk, Otoliths, Posit, BlazeVOX, and SurVision. He is the winner of the 2021 James Tate International Prize for Poetry and was a finalist for the W.C. Williams Book Award. His play Blue Period about Picasso in Paris in 1900 was selected by the Times of San Diego as one of the best 10 plays presented in 2022. He is the recipient of a Drama-logue for playwriting.
