Brendan Lorber
2 Poems
Faux Fur Yarmulke
for Ace

“The stars that are out are out to get you”
  –Kevin Varrone

“The security in my dreams is very lax”
  –Tracey McTague

I’m gathering a hat from memory
the kind of hats there are
Some people want the blues so bad
they have to name their children
after chord progressions
Some people have children
as an excuse to steal things
I don’t have to think anymore
of myself as a vengeful God
or any kind of God now that
my stolen hat made way
for a new hat     The bare
sky contains my head
A benevolent schemer
contains that     Rosy tenor
of my secret operative
The table of contents
for this week is longer
than my attention span
My attention   extracted
from a snarl of personal
history     intersects
the full age of the world
No longer   never before
it turns out     surrounded
by sleepers living in dull times
There are guards on my pillow
& dogs in my REM   They have
people trained for escapist
missions now that escapism
is where the real danger snarls
Two thousand year bender
flat earthed into a leaf bag
Someone stole my hat
because it was time
for heaven to make a wish
on my naked dandelion head



Five Aces (or 316 23rd Street)

“April, Not an Inventory but a Blizzard”
  –Alice Notley

Clouds stare down        They see themselves in us
in a moment of lassitude      Even your grandfather
Your grandfather’s ears    The warm mouth of the subway
& I’m cumulus packed with snow       Oh my god I’m snowing!
Crumbled archipelago of cookies in the Greek coffee
sweetens the hustle past traumatic landscapers
Each season draped over the chair of the next
Fleshy calendar of trousers    Bloused out heap

Twelve reasons immediately on the next
naked & intuitive in their weather   They
draw each limb & airborne crystal palm
over the city’s highest point   Visionary red eye
absorbs the digital & the deep blue scene
The scented timeline bends at the shutter finger
The clouds make themselves comfortable
Comfortable shrines to the skywriter
of up the sleeve precipitation & alchemical snow

To anticipate the future provide spots
where it wants to happen    When you say snow
here’s a grove of tingling spiders for it to fall
under a tender well-oiled scalp      Deal a hand
Sticky Minoan blackouts past a Gringer moon
Five of a kind as a kind of generosity    Footprints
on us left by the snow      That’s the kind of quietly
raucous literary couple I’m talking about
I demand the winter wrestle me to the ground
Make me snow        The winter of Mister Softee
welcome wagons  & a red carpet of lighting t
through the blizzard       You there:   make me snow!

Hand the b-roll mojo bags of snow to the Nescafe
spring of ladies & other minor demons    I will overpower
you with lust   With Cipro & problematic ravens together
Totemic bitemarks in a granny smith until someone
corvid consents to snow   Frederick Law Olmstead’s
Tiffany glass eye      Minerva’s copper fingers call this summer
But summer won’t call anyone    The four seasons screen
anything that rings   They run off when the months just want to talk

A viney arm or veve hand hellos it like a riddle:
Find the lady  Find the Mary, Child & Sphinx
Start the helicopter gauzed in grape leaves
A Simea Cynthia chrysalis disguised as a human head
Lawnmowers hid in a feathery meadow
Between Hoyles & Peterson’s Field Guide to Fields
nothings uncovered from squirrels below deck
to sodden models in a tank    But past the paraffin
bonfire?       The intuitive blizzard of sparks
over eyelashes     What impossible suit
What new deck    What fifth season piled up at hand?

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