Two Poems

Subject Position

In other words, what is it like to be you? he asks—
so I tell him it’s like riding in a jet in a snow storm
sucking on a bitter orange spritz—like feeding
one thousand black rabbits a bag of deli chips—
it’s like all the roads in Europe are honest-to-God
this thick so they never ever have to repave—
no craquelure this way—no car and driver gulped
down by a vengeful plot washed out—what I mean is
the city I was born in was no such place—it’s like
sidewalks salted to twinkling—leaded ground and
grass I played in—street I called moon since it
resembled—no, because my mom had sung a name
—said I’d see if the sky would drop its grays—
it’s like I can’t see the moon—like that day every day.

Apocalypse; Sweetness

If and when all this is a film strip
those last alive will crank to the frame where
you wear mustard, a polkadot dress. There’s
a deviled egg in your left hand, a glass
of absinthe in the other. Days will go
on like this: each skid mark on the silent
tarmac tells them how, so why, to live on.
Will there even be calendars? I haven’t
the heart for such difficult calculations
anymore, what with the Party at the End
happening so soon. Everyone likes cake
and lemonade in bad times, darling. But
you in this photograph will warn stragglers:
often, at our best, we craved bitterness.

________

Ian Burnette lives in Ann Arbor, where they are a Zell postgraduate fellow at the University of Michigan.