SPENCER SILVERTHORNE / 3 POEMS
I Tended Toward My Own Ubiquity When I Wanted to Make You Feel Infinite
Suppose I steal a horse. My horse is the bromide that hops over the house.
My conceit should be that leafless branch scratching the windowpane in the wind. A life with a limp wrist feels like you left your hand in a bowl of hot water for far too long. I put your hand there, just so you know exactitude.
You beat the pulp out, so I lie about adoring the smell of Taschen books. And then I give terrible directions to the factory tour. And then I bear the ignorance of paste.
The pathetic use of persistent browning happens to our yucca plant. My mistake for negligence comes with a deluge. The town hopes to be wet, so we prostrate.
My neighbor unloads an abundance from a big rig. She finally has rewarded my attempt at fecundity. Hey, we already plunged into the specificity of your marks on the ream.
Sorry you misinterpret my need to time travel, but then I insist on reciting lines from my grandmother’s book again: My life is primitive as a pine cone/I put posterity on every fireplace in New England/Can you call my nephew a nincompoop for me?/Have a blackberry.
David Lynch Invented the 1990s
This is what I tell a barber when I want a fresh new cut. Every time I go I hope he swirls me in the chair, and I often wonder if this rips open the air.
Once upon a time holes had electric and static perimeters. Now the graphics department works with a limited budget.
What a rotten wish, the barber could say while he files my neck. So I change the subject and speak of a lament for ingrown hairs. It goes something like this:
Don’t mess with my pus!
You may think you’re Fussbudget-in-Chief,
but my body
does not lawn for your eyes. You, sir, watched
Too many scissors p e r f o r M
near miss perversions.
Contest the dirt all you want. It’s private property!
And I make ratings out of courtrooms.
The barber does not like my lament, and he sends me to a Christopher. A Christopher is not as popular as a Michael, but I know several by heart. Their ventricles are solid, and if I may, I feel rooted when I encounter one.
A Christopher only knows strategy and mobility, so I can only feign active eyebrows for so long. I return to this one Michael because he wears plaid and lectures on the celestial potential of boars:
The horoscope for the late mid to the late 1980s was so bloated that it became illegible as soda in a cow’s stomach. The world thought the war was over, because we were drunk on fructose and Courier New again. Why fight when there’s absolute pleasure in saw noise and sudden shifts of narrative?
⬭
What would I do if I were placed in a high school classroom? Would the principal announce my name as a contender for a deus ex-machina on a soap opera? Wonder if I would be playing the dead and then be reanimated in an auto park for Daytime Emmy purposes.
A remake is a remake, and I find the desire to do otherwise as irresolute as lost key.
It turns out I just have to push a dolly in a maze of fern that creates a convincing atmosphere — this is a place where we nod with intrinsic appeal. I sobbed in a seat anyway.
The cliffs in Ventura were not as real as one supposes, no matter how dramatic and inspiring a drive on the 101 is.
A Christopher appears to ingratiate his real estate holdings, because his parents objected to his desire to cultivate a dollhouse collection. He also spends his free time pinning classifieds in his office. There’s no surprise that he received a bonus this quarter.
That one Michael did drive me to Studio City for a real audition for the dolly role, but on one condition: I had to roll down the hills because it’s the one childhood activity he skipped. It’s tough to be a boy, because your life is expected to be the steady rain to please the jacaranda and friends, but then you find out you’re this great fire after a big rattle.
I took it too far when I crawled in his set, and then wandered too close to his side of reality.
I dreamed the dream, and the sound of the zip up is so satisfying. It beats sliding your finger on chrome for spot checks between the runs of intrigue.
I Once Announced My Preference for Used Furniture, But Now I DJ Instead
A career is as callous as a wave of red plume. I told you that the reporter insisted on a swath of orange. The living room needed to pop. Everyone still talks about blue like it’s their favorite album. I suppose I walk like a jukebox and stand like a speaker near the fan.
O hey — Sorry that you had to lug that out of your hatchback.
I propose that we nest sometimes, but the neighbor’s cat got into the ginger. I have the latest for your personal value system: there was a short film that concluded with an exchange of flowers, out one cell and into another, and then we are reminded to feel aroused as a rooster slipping in moss.
You can pursue that fox all you want, but you can’t take me to the cliff this weekend.
You have to understand, I am not prepared to become a passing illustration just circulated for a week. A person is a series of breaths you challenge when they fish around the fridge for some beer, or a fickle wish for radish. I take your lack of offering, and I am gunning to conjugate your irregular huffy nights for the sake of viewing pleasure.
Spencer Silverthorne's chapbook Premium Brawn was a finalist in the Bateau Press Keel Chapbook Contest. His work has been published in Assaracus, Bending Genres, Neon Mariposa, Permafrost Magazine, Tammy, Vagabond City, Yes Poetry, and others. Originally from Philadelphia, he is now a PhD student in English and Creative Writing at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette.