Ambient Labours by Michael DuBon

Photo by Amit Rai on Unsplash

When you think of me, do you see

a winged serpent, coiled in the sky

around your throbbing heart,

ruby eyes blinking with adoration?

Do you feel my murmurs by echolocation

in deep repose 10,000 leagues

below the most profound ocean,

a kraken with mouthed tentacles,

all lips pursed,

bubbles burbling

from each pair like sad geysers?

Do you hear my voice,

that of a phoenix alight

in the body of a bard,

my troubadour hat aflame with feathers,

singing a song of how you found me

again between the lines of an ancient letter?

Perhaps you only vaguely sense a desperate man,

trying to make mythology from a six-month affair,

seeing behind his thirst trap smile,

his poems in your name and honor,

his cats and haikus a flare,

knowing he'll never be the same

without you.

Bio

Michael DuBon is a first-generation US citizen of Guatemalan descent and a first-generation college graduate. He is the author of the poetry collection Fragilidad y Free Dissociation (Girl Noise Press, forthcoming 2027), and his poems have appeared in The Meadow, The Museum of Americana, Shine Poetry Quarterly, and others. His creative nonfiction has appeared in The Plentitudes, Heartwood, and Under the Gum Tree. He holds an MFA from Saint Mary’s College of California and an MIS from Southern Utah University, and he is a tenured English professor at Everett Community College. He also volunteers as a board member at large for WTAW Press. At his most natural, he is laughing and smiling like no one is watching—because even his cat is over it and naps in the other room.