Thursday, August 30, 2012

NEW! Poem by Brendan Lorber

Brendan Lorber

INNER NO PARKING

for Lee Holloway


The moment is as it seems except 
for those in it — look at the empty 
space and then the hydrant that 
keeps it tantalizing in perpetuity

The bruised thumbnail creeps out 
from the smash it single moment in 
the door of James Spader’s Mercedes 
to the unknowable future like a loft 
where others will live someday
but who and when nobody knows

I say it with flowers and mirrors — 
contingencies that make the room 
without being the room itself

Same old me with new hair or 
teacher in the room where one 
waits for me to take place

Once the truth of the moment
is discovered the moment is past 

We know how last summer 
turned out and also that 
knowing means summer’s over

What little innocence we have 
predicated on failure to notice 
our own corruption The 
redemptive inability that rests 
in the dirtiness of our hands

Once yoga is perceived as 
money laundering it ceases to 
be either fraud or Bikram 
White carpets or spankings 
we are not allowed without
a long gaze that the sidelong 

glance knocks to the ground

The neither here nor there
that was always all around
The medium relies on unrealizable 

refreshments to order the moment 
The moment orders rusty nails 
with extra tetanus in case
it gets joined by another


You’ll know me by the empty 
booth I’ve left Betrayal begins 
by definition with a vow and exists 
as the precursor for otherwise
unattainable truth Into necessity

I nailed my thumb and saw
for once that I existed over time 
The you know unknown
I’d been trying not to embody
was right there about to 
emerge from the sun that
allowed it to live but only invisibly 

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