Saturday, October 3, 2020

Lloyd Wallace : Three poems

 



Nicety

A little butter-pad
of moonlight greases

midnight
s faded plate. 

The stores are closing. Rain is falling
through the fingers of the wind

and onto me. I
m wearing nothing 

but resentments pinkish rind
and also clothes.

I am unhappy and I like it
 

when the days grow short—
I like to be disgusted

by the shape and texture
 

of my life: the wet potato chips
of weeks, and how they glob

until they form adulthood
s 

everlasting dampness.
Tomorrow, I
ll wake up

My dreams will fall behind
 

my eyes, and Ill forget them.
I
ll say good morning to the light

bulb burning lonely in my fridge
 

and I will mean it. Though I hate
to live
—and hate that Im a grape

in whom a poem
s wine is hiding— 

I will try to eat the bread
of owning nothing, knowing no one,

and never saying what I mean.
 

The stars, tonight, look like big oysters.

The eyes of the girl I love
are green.

  

Midpoint

Stars imitate the clouds. Hymn-skinned,
night-gowned, and untitled. They emerge

from night
s uncommon sideburn
like sound from out a mouth.         I
emerged

from the head of my father like an excuse

to buy a boat.         Creation
s puzzling.

If you build a house from borrowed teeth

they
ll try to burn you. If you spawn a person

when you shouldn
t have
they
ll say you did the best you could.

         I
m more into endings. Like a man
who eats the last page of his novels.

I let my food grow crude with mildew

just to know I have some hope.

         Life tends to go like this:

What
s here is just what’s left

to be forgotten, a man is most improved

when he
s decided not to talk.

I don’
t know what to think of you. The night
removes its brain, and I forgive it. 

Rain
s contact with the pavement
is like a parent at the door.

 

833
 

City night is trim.

The bus stops caster-light
Is localized, and free of envy.

Sober concrete,
White as ibuprofen

Lays its edges;
 

The asphalt just below the curb
Has an eight-ball
s dull reflection.

          I will punch the next astronomer
         
Who attempts to sniff my cum.

 

 

Lloyd Wallace is on staff at the Adroit Journal and Poetry Daily. His work has appeared in FENCE and THRUSH. The recipient of a fellowship from The Folger Shakespeare Library, you can find him on Twitter @jockeycornsilk.