Tom Gribble
Trittico poetica
A Bohemian City of Skinny Lattes and Sweet Anarchies
Black horses ran behind plate glass for half a block captioned “Save the wild”
Eternity jostled late night strollers holding hands toward their ends
A well dressed mannequin hulked in a window and asked for money
Green neon stole attention and pleasant thoughts like a spoiled child
A storefront emptied a trip to Bermuda onto the sidewalk’s snow
Crowds brought their mysteries and dementedly stirred them into whispers
“Final Sale” made weddings mote, and brides became thing-less things
Bookstore Windows Gathered Each Story
In the front of the bookstore and in the back of her mind, the hymn “Ironman” played
Rush was a thing she did between her blue eyes and crushed corduroy
A weaken sun stopped by a table to bleed on her ring and on to her mother’s hands
A lamp looked sideways and the word “Hero” cast a shadow on to the next page
“You can read about stones all you want but until you threw one…well”
“Luminiferous snow fell like ashes of Roma children on Poland,” one story begins
A boy mumbled his way through captions on pages of quiet white horses
From the Book of Miracles and Odd Events
“I’ve walked my life in one direction pausing
only to step-on crickets or to spill-out babies”
The blackened mirror dreamed poorly for a movie star
The plot: a toothless monkey, a whorehouse, her body and soul murdered each other
Neighbors stayed frightened of children roaming streets and ringing Hell’s Bells
Hunched men in a gray room’s rasp of yellow looked for their empires
The monstrous hero lived on cheers, gunfire, and expensive cuts of red meat
Who said, “The here and now and the hereafter are in different cities.”?
March hauled the bronze ocean up by its arms as daylight’s stone fell from its ledge