It's 3:00 AM. Do you know where your muse is? Sometimes, all you can do is wait. The wee small hours of the morning (as the song goes) is when you miss her most of all.

Zach Kluckman's anthology of New Mexican poets, Earthships: A New Mecca Poetry Collection, was a finalist in the 2008 NM Book Awards. Past publications include the New York Quarterly, Dos Passos Review, Cutthroat and more, as well as several anthologies. Kluckman is a man in love with the art and the state that inspires him so often.

Kluckman serves as the Executive Director of the world's first Slam Poet Laureate program. The SPL contest runs throughout May and culminates with a big night at the Kimo where someone will be crowned the first Slam Poet Laureate in the world.



Tourniquet the Morning

3 am –
eyes open like lotus flowers
too early in the season,
eyelids flutter
like petals
abandoning the leaves
for a flattering wind.
Focus on breathing –
thinking of sleep as a beast
uneasy to sneak up on
for all the mad thunder
of a heart.
Sleep is not born here-
only fears left-over
from morning papers,
broken drain pipes,
work,
a strange craving for eggs,
a memory –
She would have loved the garden –
soon the sunrise will come
through the windows
preconceived
in a wash of crimson and
umbilical yellow.
There is a zephyr in my garden-
a wind scented rain,
daughter of my thoughts
who is
not as she should be.
A sculpture of regrets
perhaps, but
I imagine her laugh-
would have been like rain
on red tiles and tears
are not born here either.

--Zachary Kluckman