GAS Featured Poet: Michael Berton

Michael Berton is a percussionist, tequila aficionado, traveler and all around bon vivant. Poems have recently appeared in The Sinking City, Pank, Caustic Frolic, Boats Against the Current, Soor Ploom, Ubu, Page & Spine, Peach Fuzz and Talking River Review. His forthcoming poetry collection, The Spinning Globe is scheduled for late 2023 from Recto y Verso. He was nominated in 2021 for the Touchstone Award. A native of El Paso,TX, he currently lives in Portland, Oregon.   

North Beach Crawl to Chinatown

 

If you don’t have a boat

on the San Andreas fault line

you do without buoyancy

but don’t stumble into Sam Wong’s Hotel

at three o’clock in the morning

after drinking with poets at Spec’s

looking to rest your aching head

you’ll be scolded for waking the owner

and the complimentary wonton soup is cold

Fingertips Rattle Drum

 

feel the imagination

a gang of potential

 

miles of breathing

anonymous name

 

swallowing hard

earth’s smoke

 

weeping and hallucinating

ancestors’ visions

 

the poet’s eye

using peyote

 

in a retching cleanse

soars a crescendo

 

upon the blue sky

water rock

 

where the moon shines

to the bottom vibrant

 

river tremors quicken

sacred afterlife rhythms

 

earth’s tumescent shadow

uncoils a gourd down

 

into a wave of tears

to chart a deluge

 

and begin healing

the universal womb.