Better Hope So

I want Death to find me planting my cabbages.    
Montaigne

Had I the druthers
that nobody does
I’d fall out working the garden,
struck amid new carbon
then maybe jailed a day or two
by modern powers,
charts and prickling tubes
all shock-hearted, code blue.

No way I want the time
to calibrate goodbyes
for that suggests a long decay
after your parting days:
There’s worse than leaving those
projects you had going, and going
out in your normal clothes,
barely knowing.

 

  

Off-Site Poem

Sometimes I get so excited, this blog can’t hold me.  That’s why I post poetry on Housefire’s site.  You should read it.  It’s called “Ogling the Madonna” and reading it will take, like, 200 seconds.

R

The Book Awards

some Mes got together with a ledger
and wrote themselves down.

One was a cringing thistle
who could barely lift the pen,

another the sucking clay he grew in,
while the me who kept his garden tidy

had long since taken to girlish drink and died
of margaritas.  One me wrote in cursive,

but not his Christian name, then two
gave synopses of famous books

in glorious print, red English.
The short me was a charming liar

—“Call me Ishmael, motherfucker”—
and the last three hunched at a mirror

while they signed, one razing his lecher beard,
one letting his grow in hope

of a better story.  The last guy took and closed
the ledger, put his stamp on its spine,

found a window (the Mes were high),
and let it go.  The tome fell

ten stories onto the head of a man
on a bad date—she knew fashion

and kept taking out her phone—knocking him free
of the whole thing.  The man was me.

I’d write back to solid guys like them
that other cities are possible

(their hearts flushed of dead holdings,
the streets flush with readers
and clean as new mirrors)

give them cause to stop in this place and hold it,
I’d write about the pleasure

of tasks and aloneness,
but don’t have the address.

A sixth borough?  The great Midwest,
Apt. 5K ½ ?  Love go bereft.

I never thanked my upstairs brothers.
Write your name down once, you’ll never have another.

“A Bank of Monitors” in NOUNS OF ASSEMBLAGE (Housefire, 2011)

I have a short story / prose poem in this slick new collection of attractive, articulate, phenomenologically sensitive & daring young writers.  You can buy it here.  You can watch a (stop-motion!) promo video here.  You can comment on how awesome it is . . . well, here.

Also, a new poem, “At the Book Awards,” will be released / unleashed in this very blog very soon.  Behave yourselves.

-Ryan

Hayes Commission

While you’re here, have a look at this guy, who is a very good poet.  Terrance Hayes, everyone.

- Ryan