Alan Britt (Western Voices 2022)

Bio: Alan Britt has been nominated for the 2021 International Janus Pannonius Prize awarded by the Hungarian Centre of PEN International for excellence in poetry from any part of the world. Previous nominated recipients include Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Charles Bernstein and Yves Bonnefoy. He was interviewed at The Library of Congress for The Poet and the Poem. A graduate of the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University he currently teaches English/Creative Writing at Towson University.

IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT

I pissed up a totem. 

So, I missed what you told ‘em.

I pissed like a marble gargoyle over 

coy & lily pads the size of paisley 

Volkswagen busses heading

for gooey Woodstock mud reflecting

Jimi’s flames of truth.

I missed when I pissed.

But, oooooo, how does it

feel, tonight?

You shouldered me on your way

to Saturn’s powder room. 

Now I don’t know which way to turn.

How can I have feelings when my feelings

confuse up from down, 

Pluto from the event horizon?

How can I invent feelings incarcerating 

feelings I cannot feel?

How can I give what I’ve lost

before losing what I never had?

How can I?

How can I?

[Thank you, Nicomedes Suárez-Araúz,

for the birth of Amnesis.] 

***

ZORA ELYSSE

Labrador coat & thick tail with King Charles

under bite, yet border collie all the way.

Obsidian girl leaping like a frog 

in Mark Twain’s satire on humanity,

& scaling our six-foot welded-wire fence,

or sailing from living room love seat 

to sofa then back again.

Arctic snow dusting bird of paradise chest 

& chin while her head scooped like a swan 

notices anything worth noticing—squirrel 

risking a split-rail that divides three backyard 

neighbors with checkerspot butterflies quivering 

infant marigolds or bumbler visiting March tulips 

like a retiree rummaging the Amish market 

for his favorite elixir of unrefined honey.

Scooped like a bolt sprung from a crossbow

Zora leaps & bounds across the yard before

landing like Baryshnikov often more softly 

than leaving the ground in the first place.

***

GREEN GRASSHOPPER

A small green grasshopper, wings

gauzed to mimic melaleuca leaves

with tan stripes lining the length

of each wing, gazes at me with eyes

that resemble two grains of sand.

He hunkers motionless on the back

of my hand while I study his oval 

face. Right hind leg missing—perhaps

why I noticed him stumbling over 

tall grass in the first place. But the 

moment I place him upon a pungent

tomato leaf, he creates a tiny avocado 

blur to a nearby cucumber vine that 

sags like dried tobacco leaves over 

the rusted rungs of its thin wire cage. 

The infinitesimal weight of this 

small green grasshopper faintly tilts 

the cucumber vine dreaming beneath 

the September sun’s bronze torso.

***

---

Setu, April 2022