Poetry, Steven Minchin

Avec O’Heaney

before

I’m stricken down
by overwhelming
heartiness

Lindo,

remember
my hands flagging
down my elbows
when I suddenly bent
them at asymmetric angles
and thrust them toward my second rib
to cry out a phlegmy Milwaukee born

Hrrrrraaghh!

I’m stricken up
like that often
you know-

I’ve watched you
you flinch with a smile
three seconds before it comes
knowing all

about the blended
and aimed reverence
laced tolerance
masking irritation
and dismissal I shove

into every
boisterous afternoon
I spend with you

On Our Way Out

We walk with a disconnect,
single file raising voices
to shout back and absorb strangers
between us and beside us-

they’re not there.

I’m behind the two of you and last
for a reason- to smoke and fume
and mutter discontent without
your sense of sound

getting in the way.

For two reasons after all.
Comfortable doesn’t mean close,
as we’re proving in the middle
of the street qua distance podium
loudly denouncing the former

at ease trying to part.

Beat

Yellow flash to St. Marks
graffiti tourist needle
exchange explained, flopped like litter
adorning a neon flushed ink cellar
on a step stoop

leading down
from the street Brent
supine aside me
vacant like the bottle in the bin
that emptied into him
throwing Dojo lusty looks

an oasis on the other side
an address exempt from the
lots of decay
that hold Greenwich in place

there forgetting phone numbers, names
rush from bleary minds
to upstate eyes
the Village like a postcard pronouncing

ephemeral importance
luster poses in the box
read it wasn’t anything
minutes after flipped, forgotten

like P. at g alongside what’s her name
when you hailed a cab because I’d never been
and we took six blocks reflexively
dive in decay, a basement bar
an ambassador inviting us
to pace, pee and disrupt dust

molest the jukebox and leave
for Astor staring at the place
to make it change to celebrate
to protest the nonexistent train
just came to come and laudably left

night to degenerate
like the ineffable urban
that erasure harbors this scene
seen as it chokes the last of its
calloused celebrity

See In Sight Down

you had a plaque
on the floor
for some reason
saying thank clouds
for letting us see
the sun
and I remembered
dreaming behind
the bar I kept
collapsing then suddenly
went blind and management

shook my shoulders
but it didn’t go
that helped me
realize how hard
it is to open your
eyes when sleeping
which I usually do
when the sun is at
the height of cloud
abuse and you’re nowhere
to be seen next time

you are
staring down enlightenment
take my eyes to the ground
blind one and distract the other
let me see
through opacity

It’s Almost John Button’s Birthday

Woman you need epaulets!
I’ll take your shoulders myself, for life- years already
I’ll hand you the baton, your husband, the resin soaked clay turtle -then do it
all over in a few days

once more in ‘91: you
head Parade this time- lend me your boa- pass the time
talking about where we’re marching by discussing
not knowing where we’re going

Gwendellen beside you
I’ll be wearing the Hindi string you put on me
(everyone thinks I’ve gone Kabbalah) and will never break your membranes
again- be strung through military attire

if only I can see it; Sister
remember surrealist poseurs once yelling
FISH! FISH! all over towns we thought
we knew? who thought, knew that
we’d later be a couple of mothers yelling Fish!
Fish get down!

And now that that’s out,  speak me to you
shout as we advance, “This is what I see from behind”
-you’re decorated now; and being propelled down the street
it’s strange- tribute- isn’t it?

Steven Minchin is a 32 year old student of Information Design and
Creative Studies-Writing at Sage College of Albany, and also studies
modern art at The Museum of Modern Art. His work has appeared or is
forthcoming in My Favorite Bullet, Right Hand Pointing, Dogmatika, Other: ,
The Green Muse, and The HazMat Literary Review. Steven lives alone and enjoys
painting as well as poetry.