#small.poem

[mollymcghee]

MAX RITVO

Plush Bunny

My poor little future, you could practically fit in a shoe-box like the one I kept peshul bunny in when I decided I was too old to sleep with her. I’d put a lid on the box every night. I knew she couldn’t breathe—she was stuffed, but I thought she’d like the dark, the quiet. She had eyes, I could see them. They were two stitches. My future has eyes, for a while. Then my future has stitches, like peshul’s. Then cool cotton, like her guts. Of course there is another world. But it is not elsewhere. The eye traps it so where heaven should be, you see shadows. You start to reek. That’s you moving on.

Max Ritvo, Plush Bunny 

poetrynw

[mollymcghee]

NOAH FALCK

FROM “YOU ARE NEARLY EVERY FUTURE”

The sounds of summer leave your lungs mid-autumn. Gulls rebuild the sky. It’s more or less a spectacle. With a gauze of dark circles under your eyes, you watch the whole world take a rain check. The clouds overlap until nightfall and you twiddle your thumbs at everyone’s mid-life crisis. The moon blinks inside out and no one notices. You do all the talking. The city lights acting as your voice.

From “You Are in Nearly Every Future” By Noah Falck  Found at Poets.org

[mollymcghee]

ROSS GAY

A SMALL NEEDFUL FACT Is that Eric Garner worked for some time for the Parks and Rec. Horticultural Department, which means, perhaps, that with his very large hands, perhaps, in all likelihood, he put gently into the earth some plants which, most likely, some of them, in all likelihood, continue to grow, continue to do what such plants do, like house and feed small and necessary creatures, like being pleasant to touch and smell, like converting sunlight into food, like making it easier for us to breathe.

A SMALL NEEDFUL FACT ROSS GAY Originally published by Split This Rock

[mollymcghee]

JOE NICHOLAS

An Exhausted Poem Written While Staring Out the Window on the Last Bus Ride To Jim’s Farm

I wake up as myself in a room I’ve never been in. I wake up as an octopus. I have always been an octopus. I wake up as a tree, but all my limbs have been sold for broom sticks. I wake up as an ostrich digging holes in the sand. I wake up as a star, and my skin screams burning. I wake up as a tooth being ripped from the gum. I wake up as a broken spider. I wake up as God, and realize I’m dreaming. I wake up as a dandelion, and am swiftly swept away. I wake up in the same place that I always fall asleep in. I wake up as you. I have always been an octopus.

first published in Fruita Pulpa

[mollymcghee]

“the iron hook” you’d grip the iron hook and pull enough to seat my brain just so to leave me needing an obsidian knife to trace my skin to go the lungs the heart washed and jarred when it’s time to wash my body in the bathtub sputtering you can pretend i’m him

Nicole Oquendo | the iron hook

| Published by Alba Journal 

[mollymcghee]

I Put a Blanket Over your Blanket Somewhere two hands are bleeding. No One lotions them or rubs them cat-like until the blood circles down the basin. Every One everywhere is twirling her hair. The blood dries itself to the side of the sink. Her mother is screaming about church; her feet are stuck to the floor. I cover her mouth in a sweeter mouth. I cover her hands with quieter, more peaceful hands. Every One is washing her dishes in dirty water. Everywhere she looks is filling up with rain. The moon is losing the moon. No One wonders why the TV’s gotten so big. No One cuts his hand on plates he has dropped and has picked up again. No One makes windows out of his chest. Says, I’m a seashore. I’m a temple. No One walks home alone. Every One flickers her lights off too early.

Kallie Falandays | I Put a Blanket Over your Blanket 

[mollymcghee]

This Room The room I entered was a dream of   this room. Surely all those feet on the sofa were mine. The oval portrait of   a dog was me at an early age. Something shimmers, something is hushed up. We had macaroni for lunch every day except Sunday, when a small quail was induced to be served to us. Why do I tell you these things? You are not even here.

John Ashbery | This Room 

Found in Lemony Snicket's All Good Slides Are Slippery: Poetry Not Written for Children That Children Might Nevertheless Enjoy  

[mollymcghee]

THE MAYOR’S GUIDE TO INDISCRETION We try to imagine the afterlife. Moonlight slathered in the small depressions beside collar bones, luxurious handholds when the body is a cliff, when the body is ravine. We try to imagine a different kind of municipality, where the people do not kiss like you or me or especially themselves. Now our mouths are practice kisses, and we open them as if at any moment an apple. This one last time, let us be distilled in darkness, in the afterlife there is no future to promise, no past lit bright by regret.

Jeffrey Morgan | The Mayor's Guide to Indiscretion 

published by diagram