five poems

by James Morehead

For the person who took a selfie with the Mona Lisa

You pushed past me to the front with an extended arm,

flashing a peace sign to frame a smirk.

How far did you travel

to turn your back on Mona

and block the view of gawkers

  & bucket-listers

    & dragged-along children

      & disinterested dates

        & infants asleep in wraps

          & cruise ship couples watching the time,

and did you notice the art student with pink highlights,

a nose ring, Doc Martens, and a mermaid tattoo,

who was sketching with a charcoal pencil

in a dogeared notebook textured by gray smudges

while I peeked over her shoulder,

holding my breath until I was invisible?

Museum for The Somnambulists

We’re together in the galleries

holding hands and pointing

Your father joyous after Canadian Thanksgiving

my father’s father unreadable over a poker hand

We blush in a corridor of first kisses

projected and flickering on a wall of sheer silk

We linger in the Hall of Death Portraits

with too many spaces left to be filled

Turning a corner puffs of air

share Vermont fall colors, cinnamon, and anise

We breathe deep before entering

An Introspection on Children and Grandchildren

featuring a pencil sketch: hands swaddling newborn Emily

and fast fierce strokes of oil as Evvie slays on drums

and a quilted collage of Cody and Miles

as they tumble at a park near Phoenix

The curator announces fifteen minutes to closing

so we take a seat in a darkened room

bathed in a soundscape from hidden speakers

of baby rattles, clinking glasses, and a muted sob

My appetite for dead things

Nails and hair continue to grow after death

and the food in front of me must be dead

yet grows like fungi from an infected mouth.

Fur-like tendrils reach outwards,

wiggling whenever my spoon, now also covered,

tries to dip into the cup of unseen terrors.

My childhood diet was fear.

I wanted my food dead and still and smooth.

Restaurant menus were filled with unknown textures

and I would wait for moments when all eyes drifted

so I could lift the noxious chunks

deftly to a napkin then tucked in my pocket

as a magician palms a coin.

So I scoop the tendrils and tuck them away

chewing on air with mimed delight

until nothing remains but a clean cup

and I smile with the contentment

not of eating—but surviving.

after Object by Meret Oppenheim, 1936, via MoMA, New York

Where the air is spiked with Bunker “C” black oil

I pause on the steel gangway of the SS Jeremiah O’Brien,

one of President Roosevelt’s real ugly ducklings

swaying and scraping, where eighty years ago

newly christened by someone forgotten,

she slipped from the coast of South Portland, Maine

into salt water mixed with champagne.

As my sneakers touch the deck

the air is spiked with Bunker “C” black oil

oozing from where boilers spit steam,

as pungent as the plastic cement

used for fusing Revell models

in my bedroom shipyard decades ago.

She was rust-free once, one of thousands of

Liberty ships built not by boys

but by Rosie-inspired women,

so Merchant Mariners could board in columns

to fight through U-boat infested Atlantic crossings

or shuttle D-Day materiel across the Channel.

Today she’s retired and secure at Pier 35

luring tourists from the Embarcadero

curious and chattering, ducking through hatches,

climbing ladders, peering into long-vacant berths,

or hosting cork-popping revelers

who swing in bow ties and dresses.

I leave them behind, drawn by the scent of oil

down into the engine room’s labyrinth.

As I place my hand on the hull, alarm bells ring—

full steam from the engine order telegraph.

The ship rumbles to life, propelled forward at 11 knots,

beyond the Golden Gate and back into the sea.

After the SS Jeremiah O’Brien Maritime Museum (San Francisco)

reaching for apples

we lay silent and naked in wonder

after the eclipse, when the moon shifted

banishing the unsettling cool of night

as sun shards returned playful on our skin.

find me an apple you whispered, grinning.

so I reached, pausing as i brushed your breasts,

twin moons that triggered shivers of wonder

and in that moment your request eclipsed,

picnic basket and finding crisp apples

forgotten, as our fingers touched and curled.

Photo of James Morehead

BIO: James Morehead is Poet Laureate Emeritus of Dublin, California, host of the Viewless Wings Poetry Podcast, and has published several poetry collections including "The Plague Doctor". “tethered” was transformed into an award-winning animated short film, “Twilight in the Sculpture Forest” won Best Documentary at the Los Angeles Poetry Film Festival, and “gallery” was set to music for baritone and piano. He has been published in the Ignatian, Beyond Words, Citron Review, Ekphrastic Review, Loud Coffee Press, Havik, and others. James has performed in Patagonia's Poet Laureate Celebration, NPR’s Poetically Yours, and as Guest Poet at the 20th Annual Haiku Festival.