Five Poems

ENCORE

No, I don’t; this is my eye
Blank stake, a green stare

The ocean remains off limits

It’s not doing me any
Good being good
At what I’m doing

Good lord, it was a terrible
Ticking

When the time comes
Know I don’t
I won’t reappear

NOTHING HALETHORPE

live in anything but this
shade that feels like

full sun, don’t, no tint or how
to see it reproduce

its effects on my mood and
interpretation of email suggestions

it’s a dramedy, it’s a satire
so I’ve started crying at my birth

-day, dumb holiday
I forget, eat cold noodles

in the kitchen when you paused
compassion, palm raised

single chocolate, empty card
single candle, lost wick

POEM

A red cat face in spray paint
on the locked-up shed
across the street.

Just ears and a scowl,
three whiskers a side
below a sketch of a pizza.

Capped stupid, scrawled tags,
all in black. Cat fills a small gap,
a red gash across the peeling
white of the door.

Lock and key,
half anger, half
grimace, hunger
and an opportunity.

EASTERN OUTDOOR

But I’m still the assassin,
I’m full classy,
at least gold,
at least sped up, speedy rush
on a herky-jerky public transit ride.

I’m killing,
or maybe dead,
a glamor god glamped down
into perennial party pooper.

I’m riding.
I’m the assassin plus.
I’m so tired from it, thus
I slip myself an allergy pill

to quell my well-earned sleep germs.
So speedy, so shameful. Tonight’s rest’ll
turn me husk, healthier.

∩

Thea Brown is the author of three collections of poetry, most recently Loner Forensics (Northwestern University Press 2023). Recent or forthcoming poems can be found in Bennington Review, the tiny, Action, Spectacle, River Styx, and elsewhere. She lives in Baltimore and teaches creative writing at the George Washington University.