Andrew Mister - Two Poems

(1:06 a.m.)

meanwhile in the city known
for shipwrecks, night bleeds
around the cars in the 7-11
parking lot, the snow
stopped falling, though we
can still hear it pouring
out of the cutlass supreme’s
radio. we’ve been in the habit
of counting them dead,
the houses. how dearly,
the night holds the damp.
the twine that holds a thought
suspended above your head
severs the though. the resolve
to sit in that car all night knowing
the next day is dust on your hands.


(Originally published in TYPO)


*

Avec Laudenum

We entered the sky splayed blue

The clouds tattooed around its wrists

I can’t eat them through I’d like to

Follow you anywhere except into that

Present tense I used to conceive of

Summer kept us busy and by early

September lying in the highway around his feet

I began to believe my visions

Only a suitcase away from leaving or

15 boxes of books make a life worth

Living out indefinitely under the lost

Sunset we are only a backdrop for the rain

Clouds begin to dissolve into asphalt

The ghost in the machinations is speaking

Please be quite please we are trying

To sleep beneath creaking floorboards

I told my neighbor at 3:15 a.m. as our dreams

Rose thru the highway around he feet

But a dream is only the stage for what’s dreaming

Beneath the shine of corrugated metal I felt

The obdurate music of stimulus/response

You’ll hear that sound in so many words

It’s like listening to god. He’s got telephones for eyes.