FANZINE

WRITTEN IN AN ABANDONED MOVIE THEATRE

Was there
a sky

before these fifteen
years

in a trashcan’s

sewer, dragged
along the

bottom of
the ocean, checking

the time and winking

at the starfish but
not cool

at all, my

leather jacket having burned off

in her Susquehanna
sleep, my

dark lover having left
me for

the turquoise moon.

__

I stopped a girl in Germany
to ask where

I was going and how
to get there

 __

Say a word for the whiplash rose,

Great Goblin
of the wasted year.

Death is an apple, filled with strange coins,
but now

I’m telling you things
you already know.

 __

How long have I been smoking this cigarette? I
can no longer see the page. How long have you been sitting

in the mirror, bitter
knees pressed to the first night-sky?

 __

It’s enough, now, anywhere
at all, with the darkness in
the trees to drive into.

———————

_{Michael Keenan’s first book of poems, “Translations On Waking In An Italian Cemetery,” was released by A-Minor Press in 2014. He currently talks to people at Columbia University and the New School.}

_{Photo: Louise Mathias}