POETRY
“Poetry is language at its most distilled and most powerful.”
Millions of Americans have been affected by identity theft. It’s probably the greenhouse gases.
You let the yellow glow
from eye sockets. The building up the street
is burning faster and faster.
Even as the sun warms the concrete
the long nights’ sensual cold lingers in my clothes.
We found in his suitcase T-shirts, his siddur, gifts he bought for his grandchildren…
Even from this distance I could go out
the door it would bang shut and crumble
If America is Babylon / and you are an exile / newly arrived among pagans / Catholic, ‘Ngolan, Black, woman / you already know how to pray
we drove on through
the blue seal of morning as the turbines
turned and winked out their hearts
The poetry of Brian S. Ellis unravels, inverts, investigates, and complicates. His poems are radical koans and invitations to forego common narratives.
Mostly he ate what was put on his plate
snuck coffee grounds or dirt for a snack
Once a zipper Unzipped
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.
I tap at the alphabet while a single deer
taps at the dirt beyond the brush
on the far side of the tree line.
I buy too much, for someone of my stature.
could pawn a skinny metaphor to purchase a plump skin.
its reputed in our lineage— to daydream a life that shreds our pockets.