Three poems by Rex Ybañez

                           




Living in Tomorrow’s Modern Boxes

Where there is consciousness

a fourth wall accompanies:

does the soliloquy or the aside

provide the cubism needed to break on

through to the other side? Here

we have a cognitive problem

in this reality where we’re taught to

shove emotions into boxes and call it

compartmentalization. I feel the last 

few years of my life, I’ve been

living out of boxes, and there’s 

something grammatically incorrect

with this claim. Typically, we all live

in a space—a house, an alleyway, the world—

and to live out of something seems

to logically denote that space is

no longer enclosed: there’s freedom,

the cardboard flaps are undone.

Essentially, parts of my life live in boxes

whereas the “I” does not; however

if Pardora’s box was actually a pithos, 

does a box necessarily need to be rectangular?

This is a tangent beyond trigonometry,

and if a point were on a graph

its coordinates would posit an error:

life is encased in a Russian doll complex

where we may talk about freedom

or thinking outside the box while

people can’t see that Earth is

a kind of container, different sections

for different things. When do houses

become homes? I don’t know,

but maybe I’m not alone in

thinking everyone lives out of boxes

and transcendence is required to slip

out of the dimensional sandwich. 

Heavy Change (Right Here)

                                   right

here
              coming view
right
here
              soon near you
right
here
              we’ll fold back
right
here 
              & backlash
 right
 here

              with this match
right
here

              aftermath

right
here
       
             your ill luck
right
here

             arrhythmic
 right
 here
  
             jazz drum kits
 right
 here

            illicit
right
here
 
            le mot juste
right
here

           attitude
 right
 here

           now you may
right
here

          turn the page
 right
 here

          interlude
right
here

        classic mood
right
here
   
        velvet song

right
here
          all week long


Fossil

In the origin story, whichever
one to fit within a sleepless puzzle,
where does it say you
& I remain friends? In the stillness,
displaced, out of time,
our earthly remains
lounge in a layered parquetry.
May we stay as
ammonites, shelled
upon shale & stone like
names carved unto
trees. Here is our paralysis,
petrified in a nexus
among the sediment:
what is rudiment provides
our quiet parliament
chiaroscuro
to clear the obscure.
If all of history is
summed up
as a perpetual echo,
we must tell the present
loudly, It is your turn
to live forever—
let us go then and
shout up ahead
this story together. 


About the author:

Rex Ybañez is a substitute teacher in Missouri who also works with adults with developmental disabilities. He has earned his Bachelor of Arts in English at Southwest Baptist University and is a former member of the Missouri State Poetry Society as well as a former Pushcart Prize nominee. His works have been published among magazines and journals in the US and in the UK such as Peculiar Mormyrid, Haverthorn, Noctua Review, Prism Review, YARN, Potluck Mag, DANSE MACABRE, and many others.