April - Poem 22
untitled / Maureen Alsop
My Perfect Reader / Bob Bradshaw
What would she be like?
I’d settle for one reader,
much like I would
for one umbrella
during a downpour.
I’d also want my reader
to be beautiful,
and tall.
But not so tall
her face is veiled by clouds…
a reader whose height
requires me
to reach her
by climbing
a firetruck’s ladder,
wobbling
on the top rung
as I read my latest poem,
the wind riffling
its pages.
No, I want a reader
like an Audrey Hepburn
searching for a stray cat—
a poet—
in the rain
in an alley.
I wouldn’t mind getting wet
if I could be clutched
to Audrey’s
chest!
Desert / Stan Galloway
The lone and level sands stretch far away*
I thought we had built something wunderbar
explored new landscapes
airports
foods
laughed long into the night
over the word funicular
defended each other’s
dignity
reputation –
until you said you had to go it alone
and promptly found someone else journey with
leaving me looking at the ruins.
* “Ozymandias” by Percy Bysshe Shelley
Book of Breathing / Ava Hu
*
Your mind
is a river.
Death, a field
of offerings.
If the weight
of your heart
is lighter
than a feather
pass through
the serpent gate.
Remove your gold rings
and bangles.
Remove the crown
from your brow.
Stop thought.
Stop breath.
Set the heart
under the left arm.
The book of breathing
inside your chest.
Become the form
you desire.
Your mind
is a river.
We are the last
two lines.
*
Warhol In the Bungalow / Sergiy Pustogarov
we paste posters of Andy Warhol
above our beds
And collect newspapers each morning
To pulp into paper mache
Adorning the cracks along the wall next to Andy
Hoping the slopping scraps of paper
Will cover enough peeling paint
To woo the next humble lover
Into our bed
as we touch their bodies
We hope to grasp their memories
Pulling them out with each kiss
So we may learn
What the past was like
We are seeking siblings
Family
And hope
In this crazy chase we have told
Ourselves is just for love
After fucking
We snort a line of cocaine
Off each others insolent pecs
Gasping for air between each set of fitful coughing
Completely ignorant as to
The rules of doing drugs
In the middle of a studio apartment
On the 115 floor in New York City
But somehow we made this
Altar a place
To collect the past
Like little marionettes
Coming for the stroking of a dick
And leaving as a scholar
A bungalow in NYC
A museum of the past
And portal to the future
Mixing drugs and sweat
Cum and with scraps of margines
Together we march on
Together we are the city
abundance finds me / nat raum
in money, yes, but also in love, that spiteful force
which eludes me still, not for lack of flip-turns
in stomach and quickening heartbeats—i have always
been able to allow myself to fall, but the problem
is in the plummet, the hurtling, the things i yell
when control leaves my body: fuck you i hate you you’re scum
and no one believes i don’t mean it and who could
blame them, when venom makes up the meat of the anger
behind my voice, when i fear the affixion of too much, not enough,
or both in tandem, when he asks for goldilocks’ porridge
and i bring back big bad wolf—extra fangs, hold
the patience—and maybe i don’t want abundance
after all, i just need to know there is a holding room
somewhere for all of this feeling.
Sickness Insomnia / Daniel Avery Weiss
A number of things:
The life inside
A series of malfeasances
By an immune system
Cells
Progenitors
How a virus looks like a typo
How sickness includes
My nose
A sneeze
A hundred slumbering explosions
Awaken
i'll do it later / MK Zariel
it could be my last night on earth and i'd still spend it
procrastinating. the tasks pile on like weeds on
a suburban crank's monoculture lawn. the numbers
are slightly scary. i have been type A for a long time
witness my shrug when someone asks me
if i need to take a break. we live in a world in which
being a good student means exhausting yourself,
then rebel against it and decide that being a good anarchist
means exhausting yourself with a smile—that being
an anarchist at all means forfeiting one's ability
to delegate. my friend tells me that, after thirty years
of organizing, she's only now learned that she
can tell other people to do things. i hate that i can relate.
i have been left-wing since middle school and a people-pleaser
since conception. i think i came out not crying but instead saying
no, really, anything is fine. it could be my last night on earth
and i still won't answer my freaking email. somehow i think
this is cosmic confirmation that i'm a bad person. even as
a practicing Discordian, i can't seem to let go of the moralistic
preaching that seems to have all of humanity in a polite chokehold.
i could unlearn that, but it would be a task. i could take a deep breath,
but it would be a task. i could procrastinate, and i could die,
and i could live.
