VINYL POETRY

Volume 9, November 2013

BIRDIE
Jesse MackView Contributor’s Note

three poems

*

This morning I woke hungry
for money.
The columbine
glowed like a photo
of a child glows
on a touchscreen.
I tried explaining
a fragment of Heraclitus
to a glass egg. I tried
to convince the tenement
it wasn’t a retrospective.
As one of the usually
unamazed, I believe
some flowers should be
available at a discount.
I believe inside
the blood’s some stolen
perfume & more blood.
Set a plastic bottle
on the sidewalk & drop
a match inside:
that’s currency.
What I leave behind
never stays
where I leave it.





*

Nobody’s not
mistaken about
the essentials. Music
doesn’t come from
pain. A whole river
landed in the middle
of the city, after
the fact of your beige
towel moved past the window.
Calm down, said the real
students, having recently
returned to their grass.
Calm down.
The new thinking’s
dying while you drag
the chopstick across
your plate. I
hate this city
less than you think.
A little water
at a fair clip
then it’s over.
A bus full of good enough
people’s a church.
Do I have to fake
disgust for a cigarette
somebody else
is loving, because
the heat does make crowded
the park with running
children? A gull
moves on.
I don’t await
with nervous anticipation
the departure of such afternoons
from this my corner
of the world. Calm
down, you were saying,
& the pool
rippled quietly,
just wishing for some
rougher contact.




*

This morning the people
are walking.
Something seems
about to happen,
then it does: I make
these beautiful eggs.
Your good eye
becomes a small
luminous bird
in my hand.
I could go on
joking, but when the river
looked tired that night
I told you
I was tired
& I meant it.
After all, there’s
architecture, & then
there’s architecture.
No one actually
earns their money.
It appears spontaneously
in people’s hands
& then they’re just
killing each other
to spend it. I
wish my mind were my
bank account, so
the pure cash of these
hills could get
greener in me.
Your water boils.
I don’t miss anybody.
I mean it.