3/23/2016 0 Comments Three poems by Glen ArmstrongFor Widows Under Thirty She knew that anything labeled “after hours” made promises it could not keep. Like the televangelist’s Heaven. Like anybody’s Heaven. Smashing out cigarettes that she’d only half smoked. She used to enjoy her skin more. She used to enjoy most any outer layer. She was like a blown fuse wondering where its fire had drifted after the filament broke. She studied the smoke and checked the ashtray. She reminded me of a sunflower that had seen better days. Her yellow exposed. Her shell cracked. Right there on the sidewalk. And her business was like a sad song learned years ago in church, never to be unlearned. Midsummer II Flames and mayflies Give way to brighter days Explosives and bugs Big enough for their own middle Initials The famous couple walks Ignoring the absurdist’s Ugly walking stick They kiss and life goes on Though no one is sure Of the method or manifesto The shape the unbalanced Heart takes Still the town continues To study love Examining the traces Of wedding cake On songbirds’ talons Though the gathered musicians Try to honor all requests No one remembers The chord changes To “Cherry Pink and Apple Blossom White.” Bathtub Incantation It can’t be helped. The enamel wears thin. The drain grows its rusty beard. Ajax crystals gather on large underpants. Singing naked I know what the most blessed of hobos knows: Language bounces. The telephone rings. The world squirrels bits of itself away under our fingernails. It has to do with magic and settling down to think about a journey once believed dirty, once believed endless. About the author: Glen Armstrong holds an MFA in English from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and teaches writing at Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan. He edits a poetry journal called Cruel Garters and has three recent chapbooks: Set List (Bitchin Kitsch,) In Stone and The Most Awkward Silence of All (both Cruel Garters Press.) His work has appeared in Poetry Northwest, Conduit and Cloudbank.
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