Two Poems by Vincent James Perrone from The Future

Autobiography of Dust

I’m leading a quiet life in my dark apartment |
searching for Higgs Boson in the company of
stray fireworks |

from May to October |
waiting for old habits to expire | with the
annuals and cut-rate stars | and the apartment
| is more the linger of seasons | the anthem
of chipped teeth | it is not the consciousness

of
men | that determines their being | it’s the
rustle of a dumpster at midnight | all the
people that I once knew | still alive | maybe
waiting just behind my front door | leading
the life of an empty well | in my apartment |
I’ve driven myself mad and I’m almost not
crazy now |

get me the fuck out of this
kingdom |

someone justify the pleasure of denial
| the shimmer of belief | to replace the
heliocentric model | self-destruction is more
theory than praxis | poems are a quick
dusting of snow | an apocryphal solution |
but the hush is overtaking me | like a ship of
white flowers | in a crowded harbor |

every part of me is
in violent protest | against this occupation |
I’m beginning to believe | I’m locked in the
wrong house | that there are no words like
the half learned | the dark apart | the joy in
void | the no not I | or why of not here |

fortunately | the radiators have stopped
clanking | and the courtyard is overrun with
pheasants | I haven’t been sick for at least a
month | and now spring again

Serenity Prayer

you shake with a fistful of | crushed-up stars | settle like silt in the cracks between days | siphon the dregs | awe and terror | appetite

in name only | wandering blue in a clipped horizon |

even if you flee it will follow thee | like a tremor through the arm | like a blue truck | on a country road | madness is | repeating the same action expecting | different results |

madness says | I come from good parents: my mother | is night and my father is Heaven | But my functions make me generally repulsive |

in the starved world of desire | I find ghosts in lockets |ghosts in palm lines | a ghost in an alley | waiting with a hot knife | The only offering | I can make: dried apricots | and maize |

on weekends | blackberry brandy and cloves | I commit to pushing through | the rind | to coring out the hallows | to burning

dull blue | in the brute world of desire | Belief abstracts from pain | pain testifies | with dangling sword | Thou wilt have no chance |

of gaining liberation | if you don’t work it | like a seed into frozen ground

Vincent James Perrone is the author of the poetry collection, Starving Romantic (11:11 Press, 2018), the microchap, Travelogue For The Dispossessed (Ghost City Press, 2021), and a contributor to the novel, Collected Voices in the Expanded Field (11:11 Press, 2020). His recent work can be found in Storm Cellar, The Indianapolis Review, and Olney Magazine. He is the poetry editor of The Woodward Review and lives in Detroit.

Image: cms.cem

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