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Best Poems Written by Corey Bryan

Below are the all-time best Corey Bryan poems as chosen by PoetrySoup members

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I Read a Poem Then Thought About It a Lot

 after Dilly Dally

She bought a button
to be pinned on vintage dresses
to be placed back on the lacquered shelf
after another day at the gallery:
getting lost in brushstrokes
of light and shadow,
transported like an Echo
reverberating on gilded frames

It's been sixty years
and the vintage dress has been
dry cleaned and packed away
The button lost to time,
yet small circular visions bounce
back into my head
like Echoes

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Peaches

I knew a cat once named Peaches. He was an all-black cat, but not one of those that could be described like a “shadow”, never be named Bagheera, never moved like a “black bolt” or even be described as “mysterious”. You’d never mistake him for a bad omen. He wouldn’t make a very good Halloween mascot either, the boy ran with wide-eye from vacuum cleaners and drooled in his sleep for God’s sake. Peaches had one eye. I never asked him how he lost it, or if he traded it for some extra lives or something. Frankly, I don’t even know if he remembered having two. He, with astounding two-eyed confidence, would size up the antique, conversation stained dining room table and leap up there, skewed depth perception and all, to fall six inches short of his goal. Never seemed to bother him though, two seconds later (eight seconds in cat years) he’d wiggle his butt and give it another go. Never letting one eye or wood tables or any of life’s other traditional inconveniences stop him. He could have written really great self-help books. Now that I’m thinking about it, Peaches taught me a lot about life. Most importantly, that the two o’clock sun was the best place to close your eye and doze off for an hour (four hours in cat years), drool a bit, and dream of a world without vacuums.

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Advice From a Zooplankton

Like a shy zooplankton, I float along
          Carried by fierce currents.
      I struggle but fear makes for strong,
                    harsh deterrents

This life feels microscopic, the drifting
          in every direction
      I can feel the current shifting;
                    no protection

So I yield myself to the water’s will
          As true zooplankton do.
      It washes over me, until
                    I’m born anew

For the Zip, Zig, Zag, Zing Poetry Contest sponsored by Constance La France 
1/12/23

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Gargoyles

red-carpet sunset
takes evening by her cold hand —
crows adorn the eaves

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Ode To Eloise

Eloise is a black and white cat

The pads of her feet pink

Her eyes a deep set green

My love for her grows warmer still

A lovely shade of red

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Ode To Ducks

Walking past the zoo
and they have a giant
poster of a duck hung up.
Surely there are more qualified
animals to display to 
convince would-be zoo
goers that they need to
spend money to see wildlife.
Just a moment ago
I saw 8 ducks at the lake
on the way here.
2 of them even quacked
and ruffled their feathers in 
a fury.
The best things in life
are free and have
webbed feet.

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After Mechanics of the Mundane, By Dilly Dally

The mechanics of the clock
The stutter of the ticks and tocks
The cogs eternally clenching teeth
Singing songs from underneath
The changing features of the clock face
Each hand steadfast in its place
Pendulum swinging, sounds like a knock
Who's there? I ask. Tick-tock-tick-tock.

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Ice Skating

At Lake Mission Bell, after the winter scared it solid, kids carve short stories in broken, confused cursive into the ice with pens of sharpened steel. It’s a beautiful  thing to watch geniuses compose their art. The other night, before the winter sun fell back into the earth and before the ice reclaimed its smooth canvas, I caught a glimpse of the beginnings of a child’s magnum opus. I’ll do my best to translate the figure eights and cursive Gs or Ys. I’m not a professional but it read
something like this:

“My cousin put  an Ace of Spades in his bike wheel and it goes thwap-thwap-thwap-thwap (this goes on for a while) and I love the thwaps so much I put the Queen of Hearts in mine and now we thwap all over town and down to the mini-mart to buy Gatorade and Kit-Kat bars. There’s nothing else I’d rather do and there’s no better card than the Queen of Spades except for maybe the Ace of Spades.”

 childhood stories
writ on icy canvases ~
reclaimed by Spring’s thaw

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Unloading the Dishwasher

Ting-ting
The forks
are put to bed

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Southern Summer

In the oceans of cherry tree blossoms
Shades of pink and red ebb and flow like tides
Prehensile tails curled tight, sleeping possums
adorn the arbor eaves where she resides

The southern summer sun in sky abides,
as bleeding hearts and hyacinths bloom wild
to share his gifts that light and life provides
awaiting the grasp of curious child

Verdant virgin meadows yet undefiled
Open hearts and stems to honey’s sweet kiss
Those lone, fallow fields Winter once reviled
Alive and thriving with pink vernal bliss

And I, among them, drink straight from the tap;
dream honeysuckle dreams in Summer’s lap