Fine Flu Journal
  • Home
  • Fiction
  • Poetry
  • Photography
  • Submit your work
  • Interviews
  • About
  • Contact
  • ISSUE 4

Glen Armstrong

6/22/2014

0 Comments

 
H.

Her middle initial was so concrete

 that only time and the weeds underneath

 could ever crack it,

 could ever threaten her name.

She once read an entire book

 about nothing

 but the color blue

 that seemed less real

 than that one capital letter

 immobilized by its great cast-iron period.

I took her hand and that was enough,

 each finger neither a friend nor a voice.

 Certainly not an answer.

 A heather growing in the wild.

 A touch complete enough.

Holding hands on a crisp autumn day,

 an act at once too familiar and too formal.

 A blue flower against a blue moon.

 A whisper.

 A hint at nothing more than the hint itself. 


 In Dreams

When the great Roy Orbison sings “In Dreams,”

he redeems the broken things in dreams.

The lonely bush, the golden jackass,

topiary fit for a king in dreams.

Used bandages like two Japanese flags,

the redwing blackbird spreads its wings in dreams.

I kiss each naked finger goodbye

every time the telephone rings in dreams.

Subconscious swings through jungle trees,

hit by shit chimpanzees fling in dreams.

The twentieth century’s empty room.

Yellow lights flashing under blankets in dreams.

I’m tempted to let this world unravel,

to detune all the brass and strings in dreams.

Beware, Glen, equally the sweet talk

of honeybees, the hornet’s sting in dreams.

 






Midsummer XLVIII 

I kissed a girl on a bus 

And that bus went everywhere 

I kissed a girl with the windows open 

And the windows were our mouths 

By this time the act of kissing 

Had gotten all muddled 

With the act of rolling 

The landscape revealing itself 

Little by little 

Mile by mile by mile 

Word got around 

And word got embellished 

By the young 

Who would roll into each other 

With abandon 

Like dice warmed 

By the very thought 

Of a stranger’s breath 

By the dead 

Who had left instructions 

Their tombstones chiseled 

More beautifully 

The inscriptions equal parts 

Memorial and mystery 

I could see the gears 

Under those words 

I could feel the globe’s 

Steady spin 

Against my bare skin 

My feet moist with morning dew. 
0 Comments

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.


Leave a Reply.

    Bio

    Glen Armstrong holds an MFA in English from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and teaches writing at Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan. He also edits a poetry journal called Cruel Garters.

    Poetry

    All

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.