POETRY
“Poetry is language at its most distilled and most powerful.”
I tap at the alphabet while a single deer
taps at the dirt beyond the brush
on the far side of the tree line.
Mostly he ate what was put on his plate
snuck coffee grounds or dirt for a snack
Once a zipper Unzipped
Even as the sun warms the concrete
the long nights’ sensual cold lingers in my clothes.
Do not say anything anybody else has said ever. Things are not “bleached by sun.”
I slumped in front of a massive desk, a passive patient corroded with failure and dread.
I imagine that undressing a color, though, would be so much like peeling a memory away from the grey and the white matter of your brain.
Any still figure at mid-late evening, when the long shadows make even crumbs appear arranged like furniture.
Try not to see your own predicament in every fucking thing.
The poetry of Brian S. Ellis unravels, inverts, investigates, and complicates. His poems are radical koans and invitations to forego common narratives.
Okay, picture this: We’re in an elevator. The elevator shuts down. It doesn’t matter where we’re going, only that we’re alone.
