Ray Succre has been writing for twelve years and has begun publishing his poetry while trying to broaden himself as a poet and parent. He is now beginning to send his work out at a more social level. He currently lives on the southern Oregon coast with his wife, Maisy, and baby boy, Painter. He has been published in Aesthetica, Nthposition, and The Book of Hopes and Dreams, as well as in many others both in the U.S. and abroad  

Subjective Praise

Bend no paint around this image,
steel no clay to mimic it, inebriated.

The wine in land is formal enough,
and the structure of land is molded
its voice enough, and the coloring
stroke of its grasses and soil
portraits its figure enough.

Carve no man from any life
who can’t create his basic thanks,
or some small flame, a bead, a laugh;

I give praise for a sight,
but now lend me another.


Circling Advice

“He won’t listen to me. He
stays down low, beneath me.”
She says, asking champion advice.

“Then come closer.” I champ to her,
and she down to her boy below,
and he to the tallest saber-top
of the town where I stood like a titan.


Combs and Tines

The urgency I know is time or its possession,
the impulse to own dormant reservoirs of minutes;
what lengths of them you are called to commit.

I have heard obstacle is inspiration, innovation
by routings, some stuttered oath of consciousness.

How angry I’ve been, an amount of salt
per sugary grain, how fooled and rushing,
how sieved and fanged I’ve been.

Adjourn— remit;
how diffident seems a loose calendar,
when ruled square precedes its result,
though when it follows an account, mindful,
oh, how you doctor.

I have been rattling, organised, self-heaved
and tampering through a single name
by the works I give it attribute.
Their invention spills into a pat cloth, quilted
so as to end in warmth, a blanket for toes,
foot-blanket, sand at pyramid’s base, pavement
of Earth laid prone for tires and tread.

How wrecking I’ve gone, hiding essay and pleads
in the same, gymnastic song. Fixing up the home? Live Search can help