David Rosenthal

Cold Fusion

Raised in the age of reckless fission,
we gravitate to the portmanteau:
the smog of careful imprecision
releases us so we can go
on a morphological staycation,
chillaxing with a cool mocktail
for brunch, at home in guesstimation –
syllabic real estate for sale.

We splice together frankencreatures –
labradoodles, cockapoos – 
combining all our favorite features
so we’ll never have to choose
between pluots and apriums.
Hangry, we elide resistance
into a flippant shrug that numbs
the dramedy of our existence.


Pocket Call

    after David Braden’s “Is That You?,” a sound 
    collage of voicemails from errant cell phone calls

The things we make can operate
themselves from time to time, and some
can operate each other from
a distance, and communicate.

The caller’s vague soliloquy
blends pockets of white noise, and streams
of voices from a source that seems
some distance off (though may not be),

with background from a crowded street,
or living room, or shopping mall,
or classroom, park, or public stall,
or anywhere devices greet

the ether, in the shifting weight
of car keys, wallets, combs, and pens,
as if to try to make amends
for disconnections things create.

David Rosenthal is a public school teacher in Berkeley, California. His
poems and translations have appeared in Rattle, HAD, Rust & Moth,
Birmingham Poetry Review, Cosmic Daffodil, Teachers & Writers Magazine,
Measure, and many other journals. He has been a Howard Nemerov Sonnet
Award Finalist and a Pushcart Prize Nominee. His collection, The Wild
Geography of Misplaced Things, was published by White Violet Press (Kelsay
Books).