May 17—The Down Closes Up 10625

By SUSAN BRIANTE

Farid says he wants to be a family,
he adds, by which I mean I don’t want you to die.


Arizona gnaws at the constitution.

I want to tell him that since
I was a child I have dreamed
of feeling like this, by which I mean safe.
Instead we talk about the baby.
She will cry a lot the first days
her skin in clothes, the air,
darkness and light, touch and taste
will shock her to tears.

I just read that somewhere.

Outside, temperatures filibuster spring.
The Dow “eyes” jobs, uses
a variety of special characters,
while we find a hole in the birdfeeder,
count box tops for a water bottle,
enter contests for a green home.

Suzuki compares existence to wrenching a droplet of water from a stream.
As water falls
separated by wind and rocks,

we are separated from oneness, then we have feeling.

 

 

Susan Briante is the author of Pioneers in the Study of Motion, Utopia Minus, and the chapbook The Market Is a Parasite That Looks Like a Nest, part of an ongoing lyric investigation of the stock market.

Click here to purchase Issue 03

May 17—The Down Closes Up 10625

Related Posts

Hall of Mirrors

November 2023 Poetry Feature: Virginia Konchan and Gabriel Spera

GABRIEL SPERA
Gracefully we hold each other / architects and optimists / always at arm’s length like / congenital dreamers / tango masters slinkily coiled / bright candles in a hall of mirrors / whatever I propose you propose / to conquer repeating and repeating / the opposite.

a golden field of wheat

Thresher Days

OSWALDO VARGAS
The wheat wants an apology, / for taking me this long / to show my wrists / to the thresher boy. // Finally a summer where he asks how my parents are / and my jaw is ready, / stretched open so he can hear about them, / easier. // I may look different after, / I will need a new name.

People gather in protest in front of a building; a man (center) holds up a red flag

Picket Line Baby

AIDEED MEDINA
White women give my father shaded looks./ Bringing babies to do their dirty work,/ mumbled in passing. // I am paid in jelly doughnuts / for my day on the boycott. // My dad leads my baby brother / to the front of the grocery store doors / for a meeting with the manager.