He has stories that I am not in anymore. It’s healed this way.
You are strange, my mother said, dwelling on the past.
Now that the Israeli has left, it falls on me to make the salad.
I myself should never have been born
my father holds his favorite drink
The poetry of Brian S. Ellis unravels, inverts, investigates, and complicates. His poems are radical koans and invitations to forego common narratives.
Long after midnight, we’re talking about our first time
I am not a guide for every traveler of loss.
You’ve spent a lifetime training for this.
Any still figure at mid-late evening, when the long shadows make even crumbs appear arranged like furniture.
love is a soggy tea stain on a grocery receipt
Even from this distance I could go out the door it would bang shut and crumble
You let the yellow glow from eye sockets. The building up the street is burning faster and faster.
You said it was okay to blame what goes wrong on the planet
I would always rather be happy than dignified. Rather held than held in awe.
Should have found a job by now; should have slept in the night; should have boiled old coffee before noon.
I count my homes— those of my scattered youth the sanctuary of our young family the intermittent rest stops of apartments and vacations.
we drove on through the blue seal of morning as the turbines turned and winked out their hearts
how does an afternoon turn on its axis?
Mostly he ate what was put on his plate snuck coffee grounds or dirt for a snack Once a zipper Unzipped