Three Poems

Humble Papal Funeral

I could no longer listen to the deliberation which was my first symptom. I was here first which is a way of saying I was wrong first which is a system of knowing. New systems emerge to know which happen to be retreads and remasters of earlier systems but are shiny enough to warrant a second gawky glance. I was shining myself up in the bathroom to earn third and fourth gawky glances when I heard the system come on. I’d heard it before of course. Discursive fuzz. Pieces of elastic thought insisting on themselves. Faulty accounting out loud. Checkbooks posing as first impressions and people posing as Sports Utility Vehicles. Which sport? Which utility? This had to be the start of a deflationary spiral I thought. This has to be the end. I’ve grown cynical of certitude. There are new certificates blooming in the mouths of checkbooks. They loom and gawk and glance. Something is burning for this. Every room I’m in now. What you smell is what you know. I can smell your mildew from feet away. I know how heavy the bag was you punched to earn your latte. Sweating out the dye in your Wahoo jacket. Wearing the jacket anyways. Another room burns. 

Anhedonia 

If what you want is love you are still the enemy,
you have not yet thought through clearly what that means.
On the gender selection screen I mark omnia sunt
communia. Depressed people’s kindness tastes 
like backwash you have to learn to live on. I spent the 
last decade sewing camouflage for my enemies. Even the situation
couldn’t believe itself. The hors’ d’oeuvres were granular.
The grants stagnated after the palatial estates caught wind.
Every house eavesdrops on the neighborhood. What if your
neighborhood was a stranger’s favorite spaceship? What if
your angle was right? This grief has become self-congratulatory. 
Which is a way of saying I am alive I am alive I am alive I am alive.
A redundancy we sell to the highest bidder. What is the minimum 
survivable wage in Northeast Ohio? Yeah let’s make it a dollar less than that

With Your Back Against the River

What the state calls political violence
will become the state. New age
of your old boss. He’s apologizing 
somewhere for the sun rising. 
Somewhere else for the sun setting.
I think our lines have gotten crossed.
In fact I’m sure there were better ways
to say what we didn’t. Breaking through
the line, one body after another. One body
proves to another. I have to see the end of this.
I have to see the end of this with you.

∩

Brendan Joyce is a poet.