Poems
by Ross McCleary

 

Everything Was Perfect Thank You

 

we are greeted by a disrespectful blonde

who brings us menus

stuffed-crust resentment, animus aperitivo

anything can be eaten if you are determined,

if you refuse to send it back.

 

Taste is not scent or flavour

it is temper, ricochets, lucid dreaming

she brings us bread soaked in fear and

we eat apologetic,

are deserving of less.

 

She is exhaustion

and we are exhilarated

by crossed wires

our stomachs as liminal spaces

mistakes buried in the lining of our guts

excavated by archeologists a thousand

years from now, they will ask

why we did not point out her mistake

 

because to do so would shrink everything

in every mistake is

the possibility of another world

a better and more forgiving place

 

 

 

 

 

Veins

 

The lines on my hands are

veins on a leaf   and

out the window       

the trees in the garden

a garden I never use

slow dance to a song

from my dreams.

 

I hear it 

Those overlapping tones

building churches from the rhythms

hollowed out trunks filled with congregation

with choir circles and amber-encrusted

 

articles of faith

an ecclesiastical encore  

all of life itself yet

the books on my shelf spell out a

betrayal of lost siblings

rotting corpses                     

the remnants of my veins

the last pulses before the whispers stopped

 

I place my palms up

new whispers tell me to close my eyes

turn my palms towards them            

put hands on the glass        

and pray.

 

 

 

 

 

Career

 

I could have a glittering career as

someone who doesn’t

know the layout of our bedroom

the star of a romcom about not knowing where the pans

in the kitchen go   

 

I’m majestic and revered 

I am reknown for this  

for my capacity to live so rooted

in a disfunctional present that   

 

I cannot see the ghosts

that are keeping us from sleep 

they dance in the windowpanes

sliding back and forth like subroutines  

waiting for their cue to enter

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