Forever Shampoo
Here’s a picture
of my sister
under the Arc de Triomphe,
her hair,
flaring out
to the entire universe.
There were things
that used to happen
each and every Saturday night.
We sang songs
that made us glisten
like roller skate keys.
Here’s a picture
of my sister playing bass
with The Steve Miller Band.
She had a way
of disappearing and popping
up where we’d least expect her.
Here’s one of her
flipping off Chip and Dale
behind their backs.
Here she is reconsidering
the embroidery on her shirt,
turning a flower back
to purple thread.
Year of the Sea Monkey XXXII
Americans tremble
at a supervillain’s feet.
The heart wants
what the heart wants.
My sweetheart reminds me
not to kink-shame
the Americans.
They run on different frequencies
and dream of chicken and cars.
That which they cannot fry,
they try to turbocharge.
The villain’s boot is large,
and it shines like morning dew
on a perfectly cooked thigh
or a finely tuned carburetor.
Americans like distractions:
club sandwiches and soda.
That which explodes must explode
internally, eternal.
The villain’s divine foot
must never be mentioned.
Summer Teeth
Newcomers and beachcombers
occupy the pumpkin
seed of a Venn diagram.
Dry ethnographers attend
to sand on feet,
who is overlapping
whom and such.
They stretch timeless summer
across a graph
in a notebook that would rather
be a treasure map.
They fill pages with observations
that would rather be
holding hands.
House of India #81
There is spicy stew in front of me and spicy stew becoming me. I sometimes articulate a thought that seems to come from beyond. Lather. Rinse. Repeat. Sometimes I touch my hair and realize my limits. Hard stops in spite of the world passing through.
The door opens and a chilly, unseasonal breeze scatters a stack of paid dinner checks. The new patron’s leather blazer and domino mask designate him as a crimefighter. Or a criminal. Or the shadow of a clown. This is not me.
To have a destiny, one must have a self / be a game piece. Be a racecar. Be a top hat. The thimble holds but a drop of stew. Though the waitress must know that I will not try it, she is obliged to describe the new item on the menu.
I suppose it would do no harm to try the jacket on. There is ample room in the shoulders, and though it looks odd buttoned up, there is room through the waist as well. I have recently lost some weight, and the weightless have been treating me with more respect. More affection. I meant to say the “waitress.” This is not me.
Antonyms for “White”
I’m not home when you show up
with the box
full of colorful socks
for the white
elephant sale.
It’s, accordingly, a big box,
and you leave it in the driveway.
It’s a sudden rain,
the sort in which religious types
find meaning.
I am more tempted to invent
a character who would
cherry-pick a pair
of the donated socks for himself
than I am to cherry-pick
a pair of my own.
He walks around,
his poorly hemmed pants revealing
the pink and yellow stripes.
Among the Forgetters #17
Strange blue brightness.
Red brick house.
Yellow taxis still wait
for us to break
things off.
No one loves the Bride
of Frankenstein
more than my cousin,
who lives
in Chicago.
Shiny white police
motorcycles
make
the rainclouds
seem like swear words
that when uttered
seem like forbidden tunnels.
Few dare enter.
It’s enough today to seem,
enough to glow
in such
subtle ways that no one
notices.
Glen Armstrong (he/him/his) holds an MFA in English from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and edits a poetry journal called Cruel Garters. He has three current books of poems: Invisible Histories, The New Vaudeville, and Midsummer. His work has appeared in Poetry Northwest, Conduit, and The Cream City Review.
Bindweed Magazine 