Poems by Dennis Hinrichsen

Self-Portrait W/coffee & Sand & A Nuclear Half-Life

Saugatuck // D.C. Cook Nuclear Power Plant

by Dennis Hinrichsen

From Canary Spring 2021

Dennis lives a short walk away from the convergence of two rivers in the Great Lakes Basin that flow west to Lake Michigan.

—sometimes I’m just a pinch of sand lifted

by plutonium then made molten // a melted green
raining down to the desert floor in quartz grains & feldspar //
marvelously complex—yes—Alamogordo gold //
& sometimes I am just sipping coffee
in a Saugatuck café north of two reactors // one mile
outside the ingestion pathway zone // I have gathered here
w/others to work the grid—the wi-fi’s free—& escape
the overages—breath & throat & blood & lung //
—but still I ingest // work a duality—the caffeine half-life
I need to power home from a day at the beach versus
radioactive churning at Stevensville // all those live rods
feeding the Rocket Apartmento espresso machine
so I can get my fix // —O Yucca Mountain I am going
home now into the twilight // like you // unblemished //
speeding // singing & speeding // Bluetooth on—radio

loud—windows wide open

© Dennis Hinrichsen

W/distance In It & Giraffes & The Canals Of Venice

Jacksonville Zoo //ATL // COVID-19

by Dennis Hinrichsen

From Canary Spring 2021

—I breathe indiscriminately // I kill

the same // the distance I maintain meaningless because at some point
I will have to lean down & take the soft puck of wet meat & press it
to wildness—palm flat to the bars so only fang & tongue
can graze skin // animal gulping down this generosity—this care—
then lunging // eyes clear // to the throat
—O coronavirus you are so jaguar with your spiked-exterior wish
to claw & bind me // still I risked giraffe tongue for you—
it was long & blue & wrapped my wrist as if my hand were leaf &
not the killing agent it sometimes is & then the full head dropped
so I could rub its lips—a whiskery-muscular pleasure // doubly
perceived (I hoped) // & then another stilted over
& then a third—a calf—& all were tranquil (maybe) // & then
it was done // I was gone // car rental back through ATL //
that other wet market of exotica—muffled coughs // moisture //
each thing I touched // & on the plane // this porous
habitat of breath & skin // —O fish in the canals of Venice

I can see you now the water is so clear

[schema geometrica] [w/a Slice of Apple & an Elephant]

White man, you are saluted.
Pay a few cents.
D.H. Lawrence, “Elephant”

by Dennis Hinrichsen

From Canary Summer 2021

—Ah Ganesh you take the offering so easily

from my hand this is all I know of blindness—by intuition—your vast
shy heart // by touch—your trunk-lipped (fingers really) mountain
of blood // not quite September 1995—New Delhi—the milk drinking
miracle—but still capillarial in its action—the ephemeral—
flash of apple no bigger than my pinky lifted by the forty thousand
muscles of your trunk—tossed to gullet // & then that pause
we allow for gods until one of us begged another & the other obeyed //
—O Awe-&-Wonder immensity what is lifted here—who is lifting //
I stood inside the moment like a fencepost w/arm (not tusk) extended
& sought a breach which was just my hand again w/some 12th moon
sweetness—Florida sunlight a waterfall—my own body a waterfall
of sense & taste—some intermolecular force defying gravity—the way
the keeper had you rear your trunk to reveal where the tusk was snapped—
not cut & poached to its hidden living root—by this I knew you—

by this I knew myself