By: Lawrence Bridges
MEME TRICK
The coat of snow above my brow
marks, through clouds, my body's mountain.
I hold it up with one hand like the tower
of Pisa or make the helicopter fly
into my mouth as a meme trick.
But now that I'm climbing,
it's a real mountain and I must
connect it on a map to a range I feel
beneath my fingertips as rough-textured
mornings when I'm distracted
from describing how it is
in this melted body, during a month
of rain, when we all converge,
roiling past curbs, polluting the bay
with our distresses and shame.
Now I've said improper things
with grievance to no one and nothing
but my own weight to scale and climb out
of sleep to say what it is like to feel.
BAD BOY PATRICK
I throw away scraps of paper to divert your eye
while I climb out the window to seek the truth.
Truth is Sally, Mini, Hanna, Tanna?
I heard that. Not amused. Hit
this wad of paper like a baseball! Truth is food.
You missed me. I’m texting from one of those
concrete square-angled park benches.
My excellent posture and I don't meditate!
My eyes can only target so I drone out above
and wide and see myself in the midst of rain-
free California, anywhere. I document,
run in street clothes, hatch plans, and hustle.
Forever poor, your lover, your clown. My good/
bad thoughts? Pull back the drone to space, what
of them? What bothers me is this spill on my tie.
Watch that scooter! Almost hit you. Car door
slams are salads. I like how I'm the passenger
when the car drives itself. Watch me hit
that wastebasket from twenty feet. Your turn.
A CRACK IN THE CRÈME BRÛLÉE
A river rock
a frozen dome
a friend armed
with annoying irony,
I’m struggling to
pry a layer
and enter
under a mattress’s
creamy center, sweets
in jars put up by
dead parents,
an urge to hold a child
there in that one-hour photo,
to lay hands on the deceased
or on my own survival,
this passing thing
unprotected, looking
in windows like a fox,
ahead and behind
never outside itself.
Lawrence Bridges is best known for work in the film and literary world. His poetry has appeared in The New Yorker, Poetry, and The Tampa Review. He has published three volumes of poetry: Horses on Drums, Flip Days, and Brownwood. As a filmmaker, he created a series of literary documentaries for the NEA’s “Big Read” initiative, which include profiles of Ray Bradbury, Amy Tan, Tobias Wolff, and Cynthia Ozick.
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