- Josh Pearce
Selected Poetry by Josh Pearce

Photo Source: PxHere
Beautiful Machines
What beautiful machines
we are
of eyeglass, iron blood & steel
ed mind & nervous
tics, carrying close
our pocket-sized dreams
in our
minute hands (which
behind faceglass, steel
spring driven, with
steady tickticks
slice eternity into
pocket-sized wedges)
these pinpoint imperfect
ions in our hands
(fizzfoaming in the glass
and the metal)
are Narcotic
"and from millions
of these bubbles
are all the beasts & baubles
of the universe made"
Flower of You
Ignoring both
the past, which is root
(in the loam of our
forefathers
turning over in their
mass graves)
and the future,
which is fruit
(filled with vitreous
humor of our mothers)
I am drawn merely
to the flower of you
(as an insect is to now).
Colors
That was the day I was on
some very powerful colors
the day I looked down in my hands
and beheld
the apocalypse in the black-
blue of a beetle's shell
dark and deep as the end of days.
That was the day I was
on the colors
screaming green and blue
streaks, seeing things
that I had never seen before
like bitter lemon,
cadmium,
and icterine.
That was when I was on very
strong flowers, looking
at how pure energies
refracted off of them in names
like smalt
or pomp and power
until the sun went down
and I shivered under the stars
at my own particular
frequency of cobalt
surrounded by colors
like phlox, ao,
and phthalo blue,
the very colors out of space.
That was the day
I was on some very high poetry,
trying to tell you what I saw
and everyone else didn't,
formicating fire-ant red
and bottlefly green as
I came down.
That was the day I was
translating you into
some very powerful colors:
the cyanide blue of your lips,
coal kohl lines that a cafe artist
would use in place of your eyes,
the shades of your skin
between almond and plum,
your mind in heliotrope,
words in burnt umber
and a smile in simple white:
things I had never seen before
and everyone else hadn't, either.
With the lights out, the colors
went away
and I kept my hands
at my sides
afraid that you were still there.
Mare Humorum
pluck a plum as plump
as a stormcloud
your mouth waters with
electric fruit flesh.
after the drought desert
i'm for the crater of your lips
poking with spongetongue drinking
the openings that feed
your sea of moisture
into the ocean of storms.
pick a white peach the
size of the moon
dust fuzzed dry surface but who
can count what waters move just below the skin?
wring me of all my sweat and drain the ache in my pit
with the flesh of your fruit.
electric tingle of approaching rain.
nothing can grow on a dry planet
our radio telescopes
probe the universe
for the electric signal
presence of water.
i'm slowly witching every
inch of your body.
grab the dowsing rod in both hands
and point it straight at the
source of all life.
Mare Marginis
like solar wind peeling away layers
of exo, thermo, meso,
strato, troposphere
stripping you down, diagramming
our sentences
what are we saying to each other?
an exclamation of a comet, its
upright uncommon coma
bracketed by two weeks
of crescent moon parentheses
and the regular
interruption of commas
hitching your breath like pulsar flare
whenever the pleasure signal moves through you
asteroid full stop.
the big question mark of
deep space,
event horizons beyond
which there are no answers
(em-dash stretching time asking may i ‽
before i enter)
astronaut footprints
and rover tracks
(my fingerprints on your thighs
and red rasp of stubble burn
from c*nt to neck
where the glottal rattle
of the universe's background static
hisses in the hollow of your throat)
scrawling marginalia
in a manuscript
of a story older than time
between the opening big bang
and the closing
little heat death.
Josh Pearce has been published in Analog, Asimov's, and Nature magazine. You can find his site here and his Twitter at @fictionaljosh