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Poetry

Headstand

John T. Leonard
issue three

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Listen.  Can flowers bloom in a necropolis?

What about a white city?   But then again,

we weren’t those kinds of thinkers. 

We didn’t need transitions—

Insisting, instead, on phases. 

Every day, for only that summer, you unraveled 

your mother’s old cassette tapes and tied off with them.  

The music was tangible, 

spinning around the waning moon, 

around the tops of your feet 

as you sank into a black river.

Then, there was the bridge.  Wooden tracks, not quite 

colorless, and only three meters above the road.

Too much complaining about Jimmy Eat World 

and Jawbreaker and running out of smokes

in the late afternoon, never really trusting

sunset in our city. 

That’s enough about waking to the silver of your eyes.

Believe it or not, 

there is a me now,

even as the day whomps the city        

like a child with a stick

who never knew his father.

Everything! is what I wish I could tell you.

I pass a café and the coffee pot does a kind of gurgle.

Someone has laid out a pile of ripe raisins 

for the squirrels and later, I’ll ask myself 

if there even is such a thing as

“Ripe Raisins”

Walking up the stairs, we all play 

the same old game of don’t fall down.

And who knows, 

maybe tomorrow,

if my heart allows it, I’ll    

KEEP OFF THE GRASS

and continue pulling 

the thousand strings 

that guide me onward, 

always in a burgundy rush,

whistling to forget-me-nots,

and waiting for the streetlights

to play one more song about you.