you quit wearing pants loaf around your yard in hole-nipped panties
Now that the Israeli has left, it falls on me to make the salad.
The two of us toast to a man we both love, to whatever degree, clink our glasses and laugh…
the man is stayed bent over the canvas of my sofa. the man is me the man is him self and I bring down the whip…
Ma wrings a wet world of colors
the strands of your hair on the bathroom tiles aren’t sketching defeat. that’s you spitting disease in the face with another day you’ve woken up to.
The collective failure of ethical standards
We stop doing dishes while a mile unwinds from the tree outside.
The sin is existing.
I would always rather be happy than dignified. Rather held than held in awe.
You’ve spent a lifetime training for this.
I have observed, the theorist I am
Long after midnight, we’re talking about our first time
I like to think I’m also sprung, released from the furnace knocks, done with the heavy meat stews and salty soups.
If my life was the size of my arm, I would stretch it out for you.
I want to roll in this moment until I become its vocabulary until I smell like the bones until I am its echo…
here is the sky in stop motion, flickering, a still shot in monochrome
this is what I want you to to see: leaves falling because it is too late for them not to
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.