EYELASH
by Glen Armstrong

Eyelash

It is not strange enough.
Nor beautiful enough to discuss.
At length in the museum’s coffee shop.
I’m remembering it differently.
The bees both threaten.                                                                     
And reinvigorate the landscape.
The sky looks like paper.
Another skinny girl.
Makes a wish on an eyelash.
And the wind takes them elsewhere.

I see them both again.
But this time the eyelash makes the wish.
And the girl floats away.
This is my life.
An endless introduction of replacements.
And delays.
I start to see the loose change.
And its random patterns.
Against the palm of my hand.
As the main event.

Funhouse

There was a time.
That I would walk right through.
The clown’s grotesque teeth.
And enjoy the poorly recorded.
Laughter and polka.
Now I only have fun ironically.
And never as much.
As the elderly who have conquered.
Incontinence in the ads.
It’s all about pills and charcoal.

Linings.
It’s all about cola.
And being playfully sprayed.
With the neighbor’s hose.
It’s all about crows that smoke.
Cigars and teach.
The ingénue to fly.
I wouldn’t say.
That this has been a particularly bad day.
But I somehow expected more.

To the Sky

I have no time to float.
In you slowly.
Like a rogue constellation.
Or to make a spirited year-long return.
As if I were a comet.
Caked with ice and alien DNA.
Outer space is none.
Of my business.
I can imagine nothing beyond you.
My kismet plays out amid anthills.

And poisonous eggs.
I have no time for dandelions.
That whiten and fall.
Apart and take to you.
Because some Russian weed might.
Get to you first.
I have no needs.
That you have left unfulfilled.
No notion that a sexier world.
Surely exists.

About the Author:

Glen Armstrong holds an MFA in English from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and teaches writing at Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan. He edits a poetry journal called Cruel Garters and has three recent chapbooks: Set List (Bitchin Kitsch,) In Stone and The Most Awkward Silence of All (both Cruel Garters Press.) His work has appeared in Poetry Northwest, Conduit and Cloudbank.