#gregory sherl

[blogdemocratesjr]

'Joan of Arc, Kissing the Consecrated Sword' by Dante Gabriel Rossetti c.1862/1863. A sketch from one of Rossetti's many notebooks

French Kissing

by Gregory Sherl

What is there left to do during a truce, but look at boys swinging swords at the trunks of trees? You reach into the sky & pull down a phonograph, & we listen to the helium in the stars. Your hands are clean air & that’s worth repeating, but the clouds are mad. What more than dissatisfied nature, the lakes rise to the sky, only to fall back down. Everything not the same, but still, everything. Jehanne, warmed by skin & thunder. Please stay. People love & it’s good. I’ve always said to the going, it is better to gaze at the ground than to find yourself buried beneath it. Rouen in a dream I’ll never have. Or, to purify the Seine, to growl like a lion, to cough angrily into the wind. Jesus, may we all die the same? I said His name too, I said it in a morning not yet sung.

About this poem:

"I was watching The Passion of Joan of Arc in a graduate medieval piety course, and I fell in love with Joan's eyes (or at least the actress that played Joan). I thought, I should save her. So here I am writing poems for Joan of Arc until she comes back to life and promises to never leave again."

Gregory Sherl

[dk-thrive]

Notes on a Candy Cane Tree

What did I think about before you touched my thigh? Let me say this: I’m going to touch you until my fingers fall off. If my fingers don’t fall off, I will hold your hand even if it’s sweaty. And let me say this: You are lovelier than clouds that look like lovely things. I have only loved a few times and the last time was when you rubbed my neck under the monkey bars. We weren’t much younger than we are now. I still have the same haircut. You still have only one dimple. It’s on your left cheek and it looks like you fell on a pebble. I love that it looks like you fell on a pebble. Let me say this: You taste like candy canes. There was a candy cane tree in my old neighborhood. My neighbor hung candy canes on the branches of the willow and I snatched them in the middle of the night. It was December when I rode my bike the quickest, like I was going somewhere to meet you. I like you more than the candy cane tree. Let me say this: I am uncomfortable in my own skin, so I hold your face. I hold your face and your hips but mostly your face. You have a lovely face. Let me say this: I love you like monsters like scaring little kids. I make a list of words I can use to diagram your body: petite, mellifluous, comely, milk, necessary. Please, forgive the humming; you see I rarely taste candy canes in March. When I don’t taste you I taste sweat. Not good sweat, mind you, sweaty sweat from the men’s locker room. Sometimes I taste pizza, but that’s only because I loved pizza first. Let me say this: My love for pizza was fleeting. I was young and naive and thought that extra toppings meant something. These are fine days because they end with you. Let me just say this: I’m going to kiss you until my lips fall off. If my lips don’t fall off, I will kiss up your spine until I run out of spine. Then I’ll start over.

— Gregory Sherl, [PANK] Magazine 4.09 / September 2009 (via The Vale of Soul-Making)

[allyourprettywords]

“French Kissing,” Gregory Sherl

What is there left to do during a truce, but look at boys swinging swords at the trunks of trees? You reach into the sky & pull down a phonograph, & we listen to the helium in the stars. Your hands are clean air & that's worth repeating, but the clouds are mad. What more than dissatisfied nature, the lakes rise to the sky, only to fall back down. Everything not the same, but still, everything. Jehanne, warmed by skin & thunder. Please stay. People love & it's good. I've always said to the going, it is better to gaze at the ground than to find yourself buried beneath it. Rouen in a dream I'll never have. Or, to purify the Seine, to growl like a lion, to cough angrily into the wind. Jesus, may we all die the same? I said His name too, I said it in a morning not yet sung.  

[cityofchapin]

From Monogamy Songs by Gregory Sherl

I prefer beer in a glass but I’m not attractive enough to bepicky. I miss Z the most when I imagine her leaning againstwalls and I’ve thought she disappeared. I thank myselffor writing the Bible. So many virgins converging on oneanother, my heart beating inside them. Gregory Sherl is a novelist and poet. He is the author of Monogamy Songs, The Oregon Trail is the Oregon Trail, and The Future for…

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[eunoiareview]

You Were How I Skipped Class & Still Passed Anatomy

You Were How I Skipped Class & Still Passed Anatomy

Should I introduce myself or will my confusion do it for me? Ten years later & I still don’t know which pill I’m supposed to take first, so I take all four at the same time & give a wink to the future I forget I’m waiting for. The woman I will always be in love with is on the other side of the room, practicing a magic trick where all of her clothes fall off & forget how to get back on. When did…

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[eunoiareview]

& & & & & & & & & & & & & & & & & & & & & & & & & & & & & & & & & & Then

& & & & & & & & & & & & & & & & & & & & & & & & & & & & & & & & & & Then

On the seventh day God made emojis, face paint, Spider-Man hanging upside down as he makes out with an entire city. Wikipedia as bible. Bible as flood, famine, hundreds of frogs falling on an ambulance. It’s raining. The ambulance flips. It’s been so long, I don’t remember who dies. We’ve only got three more Januaries to go until the magnolias bloom again. & the pill I was given is not the pill I…

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[eunoiareview]

The Oregon Trail walks into a bar

The Oregon Trail walks into a bar

& orders all of yesterday. I drink it through a straw. & what the trail misses is what I miss: the elbows you were created from, the lemmings child #1, Christopher, used to throw off the cliff. The wedding bells child #2, Wendy, sewed into the rabbits when taxidermy was her favorite hobby. I have been gone for so long I don’t know what to tell you first. I’ll start with this: I love you. Now I’ll…

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[eunoiareview]

The Oregon Trail calls its dead wife collect

The Oregon Trail calls its dead wife collect

& hangs up after the devil accepts the charges. Sweat drips from the bile in my dead daughter’s lungs. My dead son, he was a cloud & he still is. But the gray he breathes scares me. & what doesn’t scare me doesn’t exist. & so & so & so I move on. On to what? my dead wife’s sickness, her ex-lover asks me. To the next touch, I tell him, to the next poem, toward the air that smells like the third…

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