The Vintner
I saw a lot of miracles on my descent to the garden
Innumerable rodents in crotches of carmine red
stained with halos and television antennae
Stand close enough and you can pick up messages for the unemployed,
calls from one desolate sibling to another
At the base of the alder lazes the young vintner,
preoccupied with “filtration” and what to do with all the husks,
pulls up his britches and lights the candle
You! Yes, you with the orifices, beard dusted of gypsum board
Teach me how to bury my sweet tooth
in the diminutive fashion, out back of
PROMISED RELIEF. Ranked-choice loving
is all he’s dreaming of
behind the tight flesh of his little vessel
Do I Have the Durability?
The ever-fleeting thickness of my soul clad in
Saddle-stitching
Saddle-stitching
Like immeasurable things, subject to pithy phrases
Am I amnesiac or
That’s kind of a common lie?
Uttered in towns of the chic East, warrior-spurned
À la Stewart Copeland
A century of muzak, do I have the durability?
Or did popular science predict the sorrow
Of Grover, upon realization
That you scrub off the filth and then just sit there
Kings and Their Nonessential Princes
He dreamt after drinking of the Milk of Mendacity
A face that frames the hair like a parasol
But targeted individuals rarely realize
I was preoccupied with real estate or something that passes for
Where I will live in the foreseeable future
Among grams of protein, slick little low-profile units
The clouds held back the dining habits
A roadblock duly rattled
The plot of my first autobiography: Kings and Their Nonessential Princes
Well-composed, but with a European silhouette in mind
The heart forgets what the heart forgets
How I was as transparent as the jury
Preoccupied with artificial nightlights and genuine wallpapering
To take whatever suffices, to recommend
Investing in clothing while you can, like the star witness
Afterwards he still felt like living, just less so
Sebastian Hunter was born a baby and lived as such for several months. Poems recent and forthcoming in World Hunger, Capgras, and Reap Thrill.
Image: bobby, morguefile.com
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