I35 Creativity Corridor: Chad Reynolds, Oklahoma City, OK, April 14

Chad Reynolds is the author of 5 poetry chapbooks, the latest of which are Drummer from Greying Ghost and Eau-de-Vie from Sixth Finch. His poems have recently appeared in minnesota review, Corduroy Mountain, Toad le Journal, Cutbank, So & So Magazine, Sink Review, Spork Press, Art Focus, This Land Press, Ghostwriters of Delphi, and elsewhere. He co-founded Short Order Poems in OKC in 2014.

The Future pic is something I made to combat the banality of the "throw back thursday" meme. I tried to invent a new meme called "Fast Forward Friday." This was my first post under the #FFF hashtag. It never caught on.

The Cerberus pic is of a reading I gave in Brooklyn in 2014. I brought and sold some SOP chapbooks there. A poet in attendance at that Brooklyn reading later mentioned Short Order Poetry in an article about "The Future of Poetry". Kinda nice to think something in OKC might be inspiring poets on the East Coast. Usually it's the other way around.

LOVE POLICY

Who maintains risk of loss

in love and how

do we allocate 

it among ourselves?

A heart policy's deductible—

how many nights of suffering

before further loss transfers to
the underwriter/undertaker?

We warrant we

have not misrepresented

our love history.

It is a condition precedent hereunder

that we hold each other

harmless from consequential

damages.

The definition of bodily

injury has been endorsed

to include

mental anguish.

Our policy covers

everything

not excluded.

Excluded perils include

damage resulting from

defective parts.

A speculative risk has

chance of loss or gain

but pure risk has just

chance of loss.

What is love?

You can’t insure

that from which

you stand to gain.

We can only

be made whole

if first we break.

BLOOD MOON

           

            “Fate up against your will…”

                        —Echo and the Bunnymen

I fell asleep before

the blood moon rose

the night of mid-April snow

and inside the heater

was on and Emily was

naked under her robe

but we hadn’t done it

because the children

went to bed late and

everything was fucked

and I woke up to Gus

screaming about ice cream trucks

because he had had

a nightmare about ice cream trucks

and I remembered that I had intended

to stay up late enough

to see the blood moon

and I drew back the curtain, thinking,

if a moon reflects the light

that shines upon it,

does a blood moon refract

the light that shines upon it?

But I didn’t actually

think that. All I saw was

a darkish salmon-colored haze

basting the cars below,

just a faint glow, like the idea

of the idea of blood.

I slipped back into bed,

put my hand on the bare ass next to me,

pale and cold as a moon,

and fell asleep.

ANCIENT EGYPT

I was the glory

the sun indented

I called upon glyphs

to be the seal

a signet would invent

The noble metals

silver, gold

their powers blood red

Deep cerulean I was

Of prospectors roving,

Of weathering and form,

Of spheroidal granite cavities

where beryl is found

Of faience-making,

Of compacts

I was the substances that fuse

I was base metals

who roved minerals

I was not unprivileged,

I was alloyed with knowledge

What appears to be remains

these beads will hollow

The coffin of an infant

The goldsmith, his brazier

I was Borax in flux

a mixture of salts, oxidization

I was a distinct patina

Is having more or less doubt

the edge that nonetheless strips

an entire surface

of its dummy vessels?

I was entire faces

inlayed with millennia

An age of fuller data

and fewer answers

I was beads on the upper arm

I was a name

I had footnotes

I was endnotes

ANYWHERE, USA

There’s no terroir to

where you are and

your place is no place

special, just another place

Unsettling to learn you could

come from anywhere

and that your features

are indistinguishing

If you emerged from a dirt

you emerged from an unremarkable dirt

an unremarkable weed

in a seam between sidewalks

If you are a citizen of some Polis

it is yours more than you are its

But blandness has

its own authenticities

A weed unpulled will crack

concrete

The building shown in the two photos above was the Biltmore Hotel, which once stood where the Myriad Gardens are now. It was demolished in Oct 1977 and has become the central image in my full-length manuscript, City of Tomorrow. 

The pic above is of my son Emmett and me sitting in a little "parklet" outside of Elemental Coffee where Tim Bradford and I conceived of the idea of Short Order Poems and where we type poems for each SOP event.