Inkspot, Skyward

Rain hovers over windswept mountain.  
Inside, dripping. And more, 
vast lakes of darkness.

Ancestors’ bones hidden 
in low light. Their stories
flicker across the wall of memory:

Now the pathway narrows.
Odysseus stabs at the eye 
of the Cyclops. But, no.

He sees still. 
It’s my father’s
lucid memory. 

Blank sheets 
float in red light.
Then, slowly, images  

of the cave’s interior appear. 
Blank space floating 
in subterranean lake.

JIM KRAUS

Jim Kraus is Professor of English at Chaminade University in Honolulu. His essay “Poetry and Anti-Nuclearism” was recently published in Toxic Immanence: Decolonizing Nuclear Legacies and Futures. He is published in Virginia Quarterly Review, Bamboo Ridge, Neologism Poetry Journal and elsewhere. He recently taught poetry at Honoluluʻs Halawa Prison.