I told her “Thank You.” I didn’t mean it. –Connor Syrewicz
Dec 01
Thank God For Modern Science
I hate you Like a mother hates her children After putting them to sleep. I love you Like a mother loves her baby After flushing it down the toilet; Young feet, feeling old in the stirrups Like a vacant harbor Or an abandoned ship. It’s almost love, you see. Like when I put my head …
Dec 01
An American University
A cigarette butt Thrown in an old can Half filled with ash, Forgetting lips. A thousand milky soldiers, Fresh and sweet And white like road kill Emptied into the belly Of a whore. –Connor Syrewicz
Dec 01
What we need is less poetry
once upon a time well-paid office holders, omnipotent bankers, opulent financial elites and other criminal elements of the bourgeoisie feared the very soup they slurped from their glossy, porcelain bowls, inspecting each silver spoonful for whateverthefuck poison looks like once upon a time wall street bankers feared the horse-and-buggy parked in front of the building …
Dec 01
Editor Pants
I bought the pants more for the name than anything else. Lucky they made my ass look good and had enough give in the waist that my middle only bulged if I sat down. Black with silver pinstripes. Tight white button-up on top. I didn’t wear much black anymore, so my choice of shoes was …
Dec 01
This Rude Fun
Saturday Night is a myth, in the bad, not-true way. But I persist. The night promises something beyond a fuck and a drunken chuckle, but those are what I go looking for. Tonight’s bartendrix pours to pay the bills of the convent to which she aspires. She looks like her ancestors from a nation of …
Dec 01
A Real Bar
Better a real bar than a fake heaven. It makes tomorrow and yesterday into old stories that don’t need re-telling. The chopped lemons, the ones right there, mean more to me than all the dead guys I never heard about. And I don’t care if they really did build this very world— from the pile …
Dec 01
The Opposite of Release
To stop pretending is a long process I blow my strength on religion, alcohol, sex— every institution that both promises and prevents release The drinks mortgage the pain I know I’m due One stool over, the King of the World spends all that’s his to find the last honest man just to shake his bony …
Dec 01
Static
When I had first met Sam we were in high school. He was the first to start smoking cigarettes in our grade–that I knew of. They were Camels, and I liked the smell of them even though it earned him a reputation. “Why do you smoke them,” I asked one day, I had always been …
Dec 01
January 2: For Yuan Hongqi
That was the day when my father died Before finishing the longevity noodles Mom’s trying to feed him below our feet On the other face of the planet, where He had persisted long enough to allow Us to celebrate another new year’s day In Jingzhou as well as in Vancouver When my brother’s only son …