Glen Armstrong


Chronic Town #14


Flower and burn.
I pick out an outfit.

And wonder if the bones.
In my hand prefer certain looks.

A turtle licks the paint.
From another turtle’s shell.

Pleasure is captivity.
Beauty is hell.

Michael tells a story.
About being worn.

To a christening.
Like a pair of secondhand pants. 



Music Lesson


Reassuring emptiness:
a pin that pricks itself 

Humming and kicking a can:
Mozart is dead

Pancakes:
Mozart is turning over

Continuity:
a song that sings itself

Fulfillment:
Mozart made no such promise

Augmented fourth:
moving back and forth

A broken clasp:
a song that sings itself

Preeminent expression:
shelter from the storm. 

House of India #61


Night bites day. Evening just nibbles. We talk about midnight in whispers. In comic books. Her hair unspools, blocking out the sun and making us wonder where the green world went.

Before we can sleep soundly, we throw bolts. Like Zeus. Like Frankenstein. We give up that for which we are known. How trees shake. How wind blows. I imagine a flower big enough to cover the gruesome face with its mouth sewn shut.

We do not experience night directly. It fills in space between losses. Keys. Dignity. Racing stripes. We cannot find the soft cloth, but somehow the slate gets wiped. The pen alive with green ink. The gold tooth.

Before we speak of folklore, we should ask for a glass of wine. Before the wine arrives, we should make a list of what the wine is likely to erase. Silver coins. Kind faces. I remember gluing pieces of monsters together. The resulting statue barely stood.



Glen Armstrong (he/him) holds an MFA in English from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and edits a poetry journal called Cruel Garters. His latest book is Night School: Selected Early Poems.
https://www.facebook.com/glen.armstrong.5

 
 

previous page     contents     next page