Two Poems

 

THE BROTHERS
by Mathias Svalina*

I love when my lover looks like an indeterminate eardrum manual, a dismantlement of tools, etc. I saw him slip between two songs with something that isn’t love. When Chicago is a crosswalk collection, I am something else. A pier for fixing speculation. A dental style that is so accurate I have to bow there beneath the weird wastoid bones. No. What do they know? What could they know? I pick a noose and sing to him like the old gull I used to be. Because I can’t shake that adaptation of purposes & ideas. No.

* from Wastoid, “Wastoid”

FINGER, HAND & MOUTH THING
by Eleni Sikelianos* 

if the mouth were an ivory cloister     and   
a plectrum is also plucked     shutter

is hand     wove to winter
let the spring day’s dactyls

shatter what night carved from it     corrosive
delirium music     a poison

drop in acid      song appeared       
let my hand here corrode

the net     the gate     the finger
till the good day’s news

papers the earth     and also as
we demons are        x to them

* from Body Clock, “Plectrum”

Click here to read  “The Brothers by Mathias Svalina” and  “finger, hand & mouth thing by Eleni Sikelianos”