Written by
Nick Flynn |
I go back to the scene where the two men embrace
& grapple a handgun at stomach level between them.
They jerk around the apartment like that
holding on to each other, their cheeks
almost touching. One is shirtless, the other
wears a suit, the one in the suit came in through a window
to steal documents or diamonds, it doesn't matter anymore
which, what's important is he was found
& someone pulled a gun, and now they are holding on,
awkwardly dancing through the room, upending
a table of small framed photographs. A chair
topples, Sinatra's band punches the air with horns, I
lean forward, into the screen, they are eye-to-eye,
as stiff as my brother & me when we attempt
to hug. Soon, the gun fires and the music
quiets, the camera stops tracking and they
relax, shoulders drop, their jaws go slack
& we are all suspended in that perfect moment
when no one knows who took the bullet--
the earth spins below our feet, a blanket of swallows
changes direction suddenly above us, folding
into the rafters of a barn, and the two men
no longer struggle, they simply stand in their wreckage
propped in each other's arms.
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Written by
Carl Sandburg |
LET us sit by a hissing steam radiator a winter’s day, gray wind pattering frozen raindrops on the window,
And let us talk about milk wagon drivers and grocery delivery boys.
Let us keep our feet in wool slippers and mix hot punches—and talk about mail carriers and messenger boys slipping along the icy sidewalks.
Let us write of olden, golden days and hunters of the Holy Grail and men called “knights” riding horses in the rain, in the cold frozen rain for ladies they loved.
A roustabout hunched on a coal wagon goes by, icicles drip on his hat rim, sheets of ice wrapping the hunks of coal, the caravanserai a gray blur in slant of rain.
Let us nudge the steam radiator with our wool slippers and write poems of Launcelot, the hero, and Roland, the hero, and all the olden golden men who rode horses in the rain.
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