Poetry: Lucas Pingel
Disaster Movie
At the edge of the locust storm our toes
Make a quiet music a prayer for broken
Wings go further than the natural cadence
A new word to signal an unplanned spring
We remember it as holy another way
Our knuckles speak to one another
Walls once smooth and white pages
Once smooth and white we are among
Them simply bleeding across the calendar
Someone spilled a glass an ocean
Happened all of the caverns felt
Relieved to remember their eyes
How they scrapbooked souls
History eroded to a sharp tip
A culmination became a story a weapon
Someone is alive on the other side
Of the wall all of the banging is muted
All of our wrists have bite marks
Maybe we are small faces assembled
To make a bigger face beware
The twister soaring toward us
A crash or a stroke is only time
Trees fall from a lifetime of gentle
Breezes there is a certain way you touch me
It is part of a brand new sky
We should make new kinds of rain
We should step back and look at what we’ve done
How much longer to wait around
The corner is a lovely day a simple
Place where a memory is an even
That can just happen to you loosening
Your collar and bathing in the river
Of moments you kept in time simply for this
Disaster Movie II
We decided to try growing together
That even light had memory worth saving
Our eyes celebrated the forward motion
The magnets we dreamed now real they drew
The snow inside and sheltered it kindly
We didn’t see the glowing teeth behind us
The rabid angel was cold on our necks
It felt like falling into a sentence
A future mirror tapping against the walls
Ornaments cracked in our hands told us
To do it quietly no one looking a cardinal
Considered the dirty birdbath something else
Tongues asleep the day unfolded preciously
How pure to be a sky
To send breath to another weather
A hard music for a ribcage to carry
The angels have offered their knuckles
They burst from the garden because noise
How the swallowed bullets psalmed
Our spirits how lonely it got inside
These uniforms slung across us
What metal taught us was spark
What air taught us was song there
Was a version of you in each flicker
Disaster Movie III
A thunderstorm of ashes bears
Our histories flicked out the window
Searing the eyelashes from the trees you
Are my beautiful heat wave
I press my ear to your bandaged ribs
And hear a lifetime of radio fuzz
How could my heart have so many
Hangnails dangling lifelessly
Not a drop of blood to be tasted
Spread a salve over my split lips
All of the tumbleweed agrees we
Could have been an important city we
Could have mummified our favorite
Buildings and waited inside for this
To pass over we could have used flashlights
To burn our imaginary suns in effigy
Tell the police we didn’t know a thing
It would be as true as everything
I am in the future now and breathless
All of my clothes are filthy I am carrying
Our secrets with a timer strapped to my chest
I have trusted you with the code
In exactly one hour we will be laughing
Our cracked hands covering our faces
An hour after that I might be alone with
A throat full of ellipses you will be tired
Of torching the narrative of all the scissors
In my neck this one
Is my greatest lullaby perhaps
A holy scorched birthday present
I’ll cut the ribbon for the grand opening
A vein is as easy as a new door
To a room where you could talk to me
It is so lonely there are so many more
Miles to tarp I only hope I die with
Some audience I hope the weather is nice
Lucas Pingel has published three previous chapbooks; most recently, Yes, I’m Sure This Was a Beautiful Place. Some of his book reviews have been featured in Heavy Feather Review and Cant. He lives in the Twin Cities, where he is an assistant professor at St. Catherine University and curates the Talking Image Connection reading series.
Image: premiumbeat.com
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