Poetry By Alex Tretbar

       Christian Collins CC




Passengers

If anything, life’s too long, like the words
of someone on a plane who never knows
when to shut up, and all you want to do
is watch your city disappear
in clouds, be replaced by blue
and black, because now it’s night,
now you are all that’s awake
except for the pilot, whose presence
you begin to doubt, for you’ve never seen
these patterns of star before, and now,
if anything, life’s too short, like the words
of someone on a plane who never knows
when to wake up, because all you want to do
is tell them about the stars.





What an Angel Said
after Austin T. Holland

You better believe it,
kid: the arkless sea
is also a kind of ark.

My grief has endless credit
but I blew it all on craps
and now my eyes lack coins.

I never understood whether heaven-sent
meant from or to
that bright & high-rent place.

Divinate me. At the bottom
of every teacup (in the dregs)
you’ll find a death’s-head.

Tomorrow, you’ll risk laughter
when I ascend the compost pile
in a huff of regeneration.

Next century, I am
crowned with a wreath
of black dove & white raven

feathers.

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Alex Tretbar won the 2022 PEN America Prison Writing Contest in Poetry, and was a finalist for the 2021 PEN/Edward Bunker Prize in Fiction. His work appears in or is forthcoming from Southeast Review, Poetry Northwest, Snarl, Cobra Milk, INKSOUNDS, and Coal City Review. He lives in Kansas City, Missouri.