Paramount

by M.N. O'Brien

Do you smell the wood burning from the Halcyon
years? I swear the embers still glow under the gray.
Now I need another picture to use the leftover words.

Pass me another photograph of Marlene Dietrich,
the one with butterfly lighting, as if she was looking
up through floorboards, the shine cracking through.

Can we go soon? I'm getting older and rationality
seems unreasonable. It's paramount, like Washington,
the grommet, graceful tumbleweed, and swift fates.

If I collapse, you'll go upstairs and eat eggs without me.
I don't want that to happen later, but I'm talking before
we leave, and the view has yet to manifest on highways.

Where's the photograph, in the fireplace? I know films
with those scenes. The photograph curls up burning,
the camera zooms in on the black and white smiles.

Adam Smith Nosebleed

by M.N. O'Brien

I.
See that mountain?
See that bump
In the carpet of the Earth?

Revenge is subtle: not me,
Nor divine isolation, spins
The web of grandest design.

II.
Enough artificial saints!
Halo-headed saints!
Enough!

You and your artificial “wildernesses!”
Is that even a word?
Enough!

I've already seen your favorite car commercial.
It's nothing out of the ordinary, nor original.
Ordinarily. Enough!

III.
I've bared too many “We Buy Gold!” pawn shops
Sold at a higher price just to see a Satan cursed
To shed that snake-guy-in-the-grass skin of his!

Why can't people worship Satan in peace and love?
“God-as-a-Dictator” jokes are off-limits?
Why is your throat not dry for the newest game on a cell phone?

IV.
I couldn't control the journey of numbers.
How many times do you think Jesus
showed up to a championship event?

V.
I'll tell you the truth:
The Sun takes it with him.

Transcript

by M.N. O'Brien

The cracked staircase
drips down the window
echoing in puddles, rippling through
a reflection of The Blue Boy. I know nothing,
not even Socrates or my mother's migraines.

I must laugh at the serial
numbers when the season comes
to an end. From the start we know the sun
as green, and the trees are paying
homage, reaching up as plywood stairs.

Vowel Inversion

by M.N. O'Brien

 

You're younger than yesterday’s yellow star, and her

yin-yang necklace. The unfortunate usurper upstairs

understands the orders of the original owners, and without

being too oblivious and obscure, the invisible icons

introduce the insanity of the eclipse. I enthusiastically
endorse the endeavor of man, and all of the sun's alliteration.

Snowcapped

by M.N. O'Brien

I empty the observation deck of my mind,

guessing this is what I'm supposed to do

in my bedroom, to wake up on mountaintops.

The isotopes of winter count the ways

I wonder by looking at my footprints in snow.

I'm to understand this without thinking.

Underrated and overstated quotations burst

open a debate to decry and decriminalize.

I guess this is what I'm supposed to do

to wake up on the snowcapped mountaintops.

I guess these are the things I'm supposed to say

to empty the observation deck of my mind.

ExtinguisherAfter Giuseppe Sanmartino's “Veiled Christ”

by M.N. O'Brien

The girl was out of breath,
covered by a marble veil.

The teary eyes of a vacuum yawn
forgave her with an eternal answer

that waits to this day to be fulfilled,
so tomorrow can be as the day after and we can relax

in the freedom of death, deflated.
All of this made to extinguish a fire

that we asked to be apologized for
after we became tired of the burn.

Newark

by M.N. O'Brien

I know about scarcity, I know
the dreamy truths that fact cannot pervade
on both wings. Man is left to fly and think.
The television is American
and eccentric. I must be on my guard.

Standing on the fringe of contradiction,
a quiet life bellows at a funeral. The weather never says
a thing. It says hello and asks about your condition without
caring, expecting good and nothing more.

The crumbs of concrete
lie on the side of the road, lost in thought,
resisting the automatic life. Shopping carts, faded signs,
hotels, shadows, and the hot car seat
presses back into yourself.

I was in Newark long enough
to know the color dark blue and the comparison
of white light and yellow light, and the rumors
that white light can only be felt. I have heard
more serious charges in my lifetime of watching.

I was in Newark long enough
to know clouds behind a neon light,
funeral homes, police cars, trains,
discount fires, and believe
little boys still love
spikes and explosions.

I was in Newark long enough
to know the planes fly low, shaking
all the buildings down and throwing
the garbage in the air like a child celebration,
to know how the people walk dry mouthed
and await the opening of fire hydrants.

Saturday Evening Postscript For Norman Rockwell

by M.N. O'Brien

We can play checkers
just to be good, and your mom
has collected enough thimbles
for the other board games. I saw
fifteen, and only went to the bathroom once.

Where is your mom
anyway? Buying threads and needles?
I should steal your old scarf, so she’ll have something
to do. I know what that noise is.
Home team banners and girls
running from boys clutching frogs.

What time does your mom come
home for the scolding?
If she sees me, nothing
good can come from it.

Tree Sap Lace

by M.N. O'Brien

There is a place, a tree sap lace
dripping down the bark.

Where the red and yellow
leaves of summer’s pyre
gather upon the ground in piles,

Where headlines of hurricanes are held
hostage in newsstands,

Where a protective shore of hedges on hills
lays between the curb and the Main Street store
guarding against the wild asphalt yonder,

Where the streetlight hangs a dying metal flower
casting a tent of orange light glow.
on the waving sheets of rain at night,

Where the mountains reach
over the steeple of the church,

Where clouds are forming
cotton cobblestone streets in the sky
leading up to the white lunar light,

The fleece clouds of winter
move to strike anyone gentle enough
to look off the earth.

Take me where curtains of watery heat
rise from the road.

But I am too obviously myself,
to be a stranger anywhere.

There is a place, a tree sap lace
dripping down the bark.
In the amber I remain.

Fashion as a Still Life

by M.N. O'Brien
                     
I see you looking
perverse, a beige scarf weighing down
the collar of your petticoat and the trivial
way your fingertips move your hair behind your ears.

At some point, I was afraid of this,
as if The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa was more
embarrassing than beautiful.
I guess, like today’s scholars,
it is because of my age.

We’re still so young, and it’s not fair
being questioned all the time, when no one gave us any answers.
I think that’s the crux of the matter, like your boots,
and how your pant legs go over them.
Are you hiding something,
or do you disagree with the color blue and one dollar bills?

Your answer won’t turn me away,
but that assumption could end a chance
dancing in the air.