Four Poems
Waiting
Inside this cloud of mirrors every jealous face reverses
Scalding stars recite
aristocratic oaths
to many eyes, pressed of sand
belonging to my children
who harbor restless poemprints
like a hornet’s nest
or an ill forecast Are you bored
by the wilting of the sour snare
how it sinks into the walls
or trickles down your holographic throat
There are hurricanes today
Hurricanes frolick today earlier
than the doomcallers
call doom I am going
to another planet My children
will ramble on a backwards century
their heads reversed with animalic envy
I Love the Blues
She leans on a bunk lightpole
and links to passing eyes like What
do you need?
Millions of blue bodies
bent with poppy seeds
bend like poppy stems
as a light rain sways
She scans passerbys for runny bruises
for loose bluejean pockets
When she tongues their bruises
and their pockets
she pinches their cheeks
she slips them the blues
and strangles them mute for the rest of their lives
with polyrhythms
reptilian
and she peels open her umbrella’s face
rotund and round as an opiated planet’s
or the rectum of a giant
who sprays numbers
through his mildewed saxophone
just the way
senators spray
numbers at families
through their pixelated barrels
Astounded Choreography Thrashes the Bedroom a Body Contorted by Laughter at its Spine’s Summit
after Happiness of the Katakuris (2001)
Termites congeal in one sadean chorus
a wheel of blue aggressions
With parasitic intent
economies teeter and
claw smiling tears
into the glowing
pockets of clay
out which animals bleed
I caught laryngitis
in the crib watching clockdials
turn against
one another as
a sadean chorus might
approach their curtain’s call
Some swear death’s
blue crash is
sealed final and exclusive and for good
but termites and i know that
that’s not true
When the blue crash
picks your fat from its teeth
there’s only more
laryngitis yes that’s yet another
only unutterable strut
Forever?
Through furthest reach
Utterest yes & you & I
pantomime togetherness
Epitaph heartbeat
Quilted endless
If you hear the beetle’s ring
It is my rot arisen
bladed & green
& if you catch
that futile exhaust
gasping off this bus’ back
It’s my forever suit unfurled
Inside some sunny lawn’s
grip
Curdled with fables
& deathless in surrender
∩
PJ Lombardo is a writer from New Jersey. He earned an MFA from the University of Notre Dame. Currently, he co-edits GROTTO, a journal of grotesque-surrealist poetry. HATE, DANCE, his chapbook, was recently released by Bottlecap Press. Read his work in Works & Days, The Quarterless Review, SARKA, Spectra Poets, the Brooklyn Rail and elsewhere.