Having reintroduced poetry to analogy magazine two weeks ago with samples from David Solway’s marvellous new chapbook, From the Sommelier’s Notebook, I thought I’d take a break from the cerebral stuff and follow up with a few poems of my own.
Man Floating on a Mattress
Floating upon an air mattress in the fiery blue chlorine again, Andy has found Hell. Looks staged, like an ad for deluxe wristwatches, tequila, sleek automobiles, and the cultured, industrial man. He doomscrolls through Google headlines, always from that floating cushion that creaks and quacks him into its plastic embrace. A sandwich-board by the pool’s cracked lip with “The World Is Burning” writ large casts the image for a postcard. From this vantage, adrift in a corner of the all-inclusive, he has seen the world, dreamed of nothing, living the dream. Things could always be better. Adversities have no place here at the summit of evolution. Sunlight, glaring off the water, tears up the eyes; or is it guilt? He rubs in sunblock with conviction. Blame is a soothing balm in this heated climate. Facts are facts. Only stupid people ask questions. The inflated raft is narrow, easily upset. Andy risks spilling his appletini, tipping over completely, getting wet. He knows he could drown in just an inch of water… and his is such an easy boat to rock. It takes gentrified courage to shift his ass. Over his face, he fastens a mask.
The Rain Keeps No Appointments
It had been a long time coming. We stood on the highroad, the poet and I, looking down, shaking our heads at the scene of devastation sloping away. Massive trees heaved over, their longstanding roots like medusas opening above the dark caverns where they used to drink and feed. The way they branched in fractals at both ends, it looked like a neural network ripped out, all its schemes laid waste, or perhaps its forecasts realised. Broken limbs were strewn around among heavy stones dislodged from their ancient sockets and rolled to unsteady places. It was all mud and tangled heaps; a malingering odour of something dead; the air aswarm and buzzing; a forensic spirit picking at the bones. “What’s going on?” the poet asked. It was a rhetorical question. The rain keeps no appointments, arrives by and by in its own good time—hard and fast. It overwhelmed the spillway, wiped away the berms, broke the levee, just like we knew it would some day; the waste land, crying for renewal. It had gotten out of hand: so many cracked notions about the world had taken root and lodged themselves in common sense. I mean, it all looked natural; it all looked true. But not knowing your heart from your brain? It got so folks were afraid to breathe. Metaphors played shadow theatre in the dark. “There’s a mosquito on your knee,” the poet remarked. “I don’t mind,” I said, swatting at one whining by my ear. “She has an emptiness to fill.”
Invitation to the Masquerade
You are invited for your own sake on pain of fine and social exile to a display of kindly care. It is our intention this event prove fun but above all, safe, socially distant, faceless, preferably mediated by text message. Our goal is to minimize exchange of particles as Lucretius would have advised. You will copulate only when authorised. Looking another in the eye is unsafe, and embraces under the influence violate. Restrict yourself therefore to the legal pleasure measure. Hard liquor will be served at 6PM; a limited buffet of state foods at 7. Your dinner companion will be a mannequin. Expect tracing chips and virtue badges as party favours. Imagine the door prizes! Please mark below if you are a visible minority or of indigenous descent or are a survivor of any disability or adverse experience. You may opt not to answer of course, but weigh advantage against forfeit. The remote band will play at 8. You will dance alone at the silent disco. You will repeat: “This is the new normal.”
Since it’s August, I thought I’d share the following despite its departure from the foregoing mood: a little less heady, no sardonic sting, a bit sentimental. Hopefully I’ve captured that familiar quality of light and air and time of year.
August Sun
This early August eternity of sunlight bronzing the world like a pair of baby shoes; from four in the afternoon pouring its lazy, slow preserve till eight in the evening. How distinct, that angle of light, that familiar, warming hand, never searing or severe, each day sadly with us a little less; sorry to go, dragging its golden feet through that narrowing corridor between summer and fall like a big old kid who lately leapt around a splash pad thrashing up rainbows, who now shrinks from the creeping shadows. This light with an aura so manifestly transitive (and so damn heavy with wishes now camp is coming to a close, now loves are unwinding like the song of the cicada) is locking memories in its glow like bugs in amber. This great gleam full of winks and glimmers, slips out a shoebox of memorabilia, every year delivering its troubling keep of drifting ducks, its unhurried breeze easing through the leaves, full of promises and unpicked fruits.
Asa Boxer’s poetry has garnered several prizes and is included in various anthologies around the world. His books are The Mechanical Bird (Signal, 2007), Skullduggery (Signal, 2011), Friar Biard’s Primer to the New World (Frog Hollow Press, 2013), Etymologies (Anstruther Press, 2016), Field Notes from the Undead (Interludes Press, 2018), and The Narrow Cabinet: A Zombie Chronicle (Guernica, 2022). Boxer is also a founder of and editor at analogy magazine.
Thank you for this gift. I found the poems to be thoughtful and surprising and provocative in the best sense, prompting me to take time to take a second look at what is around me, to see more than meets the eye.