Poetry By Megan Bresnahan

Gerry Dincher CC




Idyll

You reach over me, one-handed,
lean the passenger seat back
and look up—pupils blown--
like you already know the answer.

The second son of a preacher,
forever disheveled, your hands
along my body throw sparks.

All summer long you take me
for late-night drives, the air 
whipping my hair into knots.

I am held fast by your attention, 
a hit of nitrous bursting bright 
against the back of my skull.

Years later and 2400 miles away
you’ll be the first paragraph
of my thesis on addicts--
they’re addicting.






Hotel Camphor

              “This is not your business, nor the shut door, nor the votives, though you think you know
               everything of worship.” 
               –Kerri Webster


i.

Press your ear hard against
the mattress, right there, and it’s all
you hear—the unforgiving chuff of a steam engine,
its chamber valves opening and closing
A narrowing. A solace.

ii. 

Stave these dreams of hiding drugs--
big ripe bags of green, hashish in dense
rectangulars, inky buttons of opium--
shrouding them in childhood clothing.

iii.

Our Lady of Serotonin, of Norepinephrine,
pray for us sinners, hip-deep in dropped swords.
O Patron of lost prescriptions, I swear
I will build cairns to mark the time between despairs.

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Megan Bresnahan is a poet from rural Virginia who now lives in Laguna Beach, CA. She earned a BA as part of the Area Program in Poetry Writing from the University of Virginia. When she isn’t writing, she indulges in thrift shopping and hot yoga.
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