#liam strong

[eunoiareview]

toilet flooding

it wasn’t as if the flood could be codified into components filling my bathroom it wasn’t as if my toilet broke loose a jabbering of white lips it wasn’t like a raft of blankets carried me out the door & to my father it wasn’t as if my father plunged the levee as if he thought reminding me he loves me was a requirement it wasn’t like the blood of our recycling swollen with rupture cola calcified…

[thesingingknives]

asking questions is what causes the recoil. the knockback. the one-two punch like a time signature without a bass clef. a snake without its coil. the word without sans the vowels. without that openness, that departure with which lips don't meet. an absence is just a fermata. in musical terms, it means that silence has been reached. so come the fuck on. sock me in the face one last time, your left a bolt toward silence, your left a snap pea wanting to split open.

—Liam Strong, from “letter to jayme written in a past life where the light was dying and you never listened to the cure” (Paper & Ink #18: Beats, Bums, Punks and Scumbags)

[largethingslargerthings]

Meditative Week of Poetry: Liam Strong

before your mouth 

was wide as a shovel

you loosened the collar

of your boots

like dinner plates waiting

to be washed

when i was ten

we held our shoes upside-

down like pistols aimed

at our own undoing

i’m too used to tying

my sneakers indefinitely

so that when i come home

i’m already prepared to leave