April 18-24, 2016: Poetry from KG Newman and Alex Stolis

City Fog

Coffee steams. Ding of the Metro. Suites
of flash fashion, SMS shorthand as
the noodles in the soup microwaving

in the office kitchen. Sooner or later
it breaks you—first it’s the check
engine light, then an infinitude

of clogged highway on-ramps,
singular paper clips in a box
in a box in the back of a trailer.

Put a down payment on
a house, lift a cork from
a barrel of ice wine,

discover an American equity
so mundane, so first-world hard,
it sings you to sleep at the wheel.

Polydipsia

Drinking my beer while holding
my baby is the closest I come
to being Buddha—night after
night, neighborhoods of my liver
dying off while he outgrows
one onesie, then the next.
It’s like scoops of flickering
streetlight plus the gravel
we rode in on, all the fine bits
of rock and time I can fit
in a fist. It’s cross-eyed looks
we give each other at
the end of every sixer,
birds in blue who flock
to smoke, grass growing
in the patchy backyard where,
in the corner, I pour out
the last sips and hope
to grow a tree.

Schoolhouse Rock
The Weather Show

No mittens, no boots, no scarf; fifteen feet of pure
white snow. Newspaper crumpled in sleeves. Too
dark to even see the sky. If there was a God he’d
know enough not to show up. Relics, incantations;
raise your hands and lower your head, one more
verse and salvation will come. It is guaranteed.
It is foretold. It is a whisper in a quiet room when
her husband isn’t home.

Schoolhouse Rock
Telegraph Line

There is nowhere for us to go so we keep to ourselves.
An overheard conversation burns. The rhythm of this
world doesn’t match up with the subtext; a warm rush
of wind is an unfulfilled promise. She brushes a loose
strand of hair behind her ear. Bone turns to ash; a ticket
is blown off the platform. The sky is dead and nobody
knows it.

Schoolhouse Rock
Lucky Seven

It gets harder to count the number of innocents, harder
yet to separate them from the victorious. I am afraid to
listen to your voice. Afraid I won’t recognize it or worse;
that I will. Don’t come home I won’t be there, all that’s
left is history, locked in a room. I wake in a strange bed,
dreamless and in ruins. Pure white sheets, blank white
walls, bare feet touch the floor and it is spring. This time
the blackout is perfect.