Alan Britt

UNIVERSE OF WORDS

He dances

on tiptoes

so as not

to

panic

a herd

of verbs

thereby discouraging

any chance

of contaminating

his decaying

pod

of tamarind

seeds

coffee black

as her eyes

when he

first fell

in love

with her.

On second thought, he needs to be alone.

Don’t we all?

Except when an oboe

enters

the sliding glass door

silent as a goldfinch feather

and slick like

the

gloves

of a professional burglar.

So much for Descartes trapped inside an acorn

east to west

bursting its strapless sunburnt shoulder blades.

So much for thoughts made of ether.

So much for the clown waving his rainbow tambourine

in the face

of gods,

or whatever they call themselves

these days

swirling

like

dust

devils

with

their

palatine

thumbs

goosing

our

nomenclature.

LATE, AS USUAL

(For Ron Noel: 1953-1997)

I could be sipping mob swill

instead of waiting on a friend.

I prefer friend to swill.

No offense to the underworld, but

I’ll avoid the swill & pretend that

my friend is alive & well, knowing

full well that death itself is the mob,

& life emerges from the mob.

So, dangling like a single olive

from the arthritic tree

of kingdom come with sixteen

iridium moons orbiting my filthy

brain, I’ll continue to wait

on my friend.

Sometimes the mob gyroscopes time.

Nevertheless, friend, without consequence,

including the gravity that separates you

from me, tonight, & without the banal

world that forever remains too much

with us, you’re late as usual.

Alan Britt has published 20 books of poetry and his poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, Cottonwood, Kansas Quarterly, Midwest Review, Missouri Review, New Letters, Stand (UK), plus countless others. He was nominated for the 2021 International Janus Pannonius Prize awarded by the Hungarian Centre of PEN International for excellence in poetry from any part of the world. Previous nominated recipients include Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Charles Bernstein and Yves Bonnefoy. He was interviewed at The Library of Congress for The Poet and the Poem. A graduate of the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University he currently teaches English/Creative Writing at Towson University.