Adam Malinowski
Cities #2
People pouring out into streets beautiful maneuvers my heart dances
amidst crystalizing rallies selling coordinated attacks for personal rapture
as gold prices spike and the body faces head-first into a river
of air conditioners across television country ozone getting patchy like cork
lying next to yellow hydrants the pipes yet to be replaced smoke falling like little paper trails
in a cold cabin grey, red and blue cars swoosh by rickshaws on a white sand beach
we fled the island on the Davison westbound trash blowing in our faces feet wet and slushy
as an outhouse craters into Earth pennies rustle in my denim pockets a collapsed convex
mirror beginning to fade as this melodrama cascades into ponds and carillons cry
over gorges forming new milieus as the moon burns a hole thru our atmospheric ambient
subterfuge like little hourglasses playing xylophones with comrades as work-cranes
come crashing down upon an avalanche of goods on the other side of a pool-house
fanning our muscles in wind-soaked centuries—which begin to disappear. We begin
to look a little more like Venus as larks and oceans reach their haunted capacity
crates roll back to shore on massive waves floating trash our flotilla sinks
off the Bay of Bengal fighting off new orphans a symphonic band
of rare Earth minerals whipped up on the peaks of K2 flowers grow above
my commie’s grave no more arms no more coups we have settled at last
on roses and opalite placed into cold hands as the moon follows us
thru caves filled with termites and dung places where moss no longer grows
in this house an incomprehensible music sings
to folks descending into paradise each movement resembling the last months
go by imagining what life could have been champagnes uncork bras unlatch epic
circulations of atmospheric carbon plunder us feeling like the Mars rover
on this somnolent barge as we make our movements toward new war
new eyes fresh light on the slope bees buzzing in cropfields a waterfall
pours over this dead city as a chorus of heathenistic conches sing
to a darkened sea and unknown song pours forth—the sky ignites our flag
& guns big as flowers
tear down the waning moon.
Poems by Adam Malinowski have appeared in Poets Reading the News, Philosophical Idiot, and in Mirage #5/Period(ical) #6. They hold an MA in Creative Writing from Eastern Michigan University, live in Detroit, and facilitate a poetry workshop at Women’s Huron Valley Correctional Facility in Ypsilanti, Mich.
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