SurVision Magazine
An international online magazine
that publishes Surrealist poetry in English.
Issue Fifteen
PATRICK CAHILL
Pier
The jacarandas out again and shedding their lavender, sheet music blowing across a courtyard, a cello joining choirs carried out to sea, beyond the long pier he slowly walks along, unheard music's harmonies salting the air, a gull bobbing on the black water, behind his dark glasses a dot of light on each black retina, a many-windowed building the color of clay on the next pier over, their frames a rich shade of rust, the shade of the metal stairs clinging to the building, stairs he now begins to climb, and sees in the middle distance a low ridge on which a line of marchers wave their small white flags, the beat of an invisible drum setting their pace, a rhythm that has entered his balance and carries his day away—
Transit
You open the wrought iron gate. The house has moved away from the street, and as you approach, it ages, paint flaking chips of gray, windows encrusted, shingles breaking free from the roof, and before you reach the door the house has begun to sag into the thought that gave it form. You open the door as it falls away from its hinges and disintegrates into its weathered remains, your body now merely a shadow fading among the scattered ruins of the house, the ruins fading after it. But then the original building begins to reappear and something resembling your body senses the structure's increasing weight and is swept back to street and gate—
Patrick Cahill lives in San Francisco, California. His collection, The Machinery of Sleep, came out in 2020 from Sixteen Rivers Press, and another book, If We Are the Forest the Animals Dream, is due out in 2025. His poems have appeared in Into the Void, great weather for MEDIA, VOLT, Permafrost, Hole in the Head, Club Plum, and Dog Throat Journal. He cofounded the former literary and arts journal Ambush Review, and was a contributing editor for the Sonoma County anthology Digging Our Poetic Roots.
