POETRY

“Poetry is language at its most distilled and most powerful.”
—Rita Dove
Condolences

my friends’ fathers are
dropping
I mean dying
like flies

An Interview with Brian S. Ellis

The poetry of Brian S. Ellis unravels, inverts, investigates, and complicates. His poems are radical koans and invitations to forego common narratives.

Welcome To The House of Static

here is the sky in stop motion, flickering,
a still shot in monochrome

The Body is a Sin

The sin is existing.

A Way of Seeing

Just starlight and some small scribbling across vinyl.

Black Ghosts of Ponderosa on a Silhouette of Hill

Even as the sun warms the concrete
the long nights’ sensual cold lingers in my clothes.

“Artifact,” as Translated from Gluberhöff’s Lexicon

Any still figure at mid-late evening, when the long shadows make even crumbs appear arranged like furniture.

Good Driver

Lights on the dashboard spell out
“You still can’t kiss me”

Sprung (April)

I like to think I’m also sprung,
released from the furnace knocks,
done with the heavy meat stews
and salty soups.

Despairathon

You’ve spent a lifetime training
for this.

heavy rain
The Plot

Long after midnight, we’re talking about our first time

Going Broke

Winter sat like a wolf
on the horizon.

Pit Stop in Kansas

we drove on through
the blue seal of morning as the turbines
turned and winked out their hearts

Me and Other Bodily Accessories

I am not a guide
for every traveler
of loss.

3:17 AM as Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks

Part of being a good sad person
is always painting the shadows
in the right direction and knowing
what sorrow to art with.

Hollywood Hills
the remarkable thing

I am still waiting for the lion

Mom, in Her Dementia, Steals Oranges

and apples, mackintosh mostly, but any kind left in The Pub
at the Assisted Living Place