Misadventure
Lift his body out of the pond
He’s dead isn’t he
A pile of paperbacks
A wrought iron chair
A basket of white geraniums
A boy in a three-piece suit
At the height of summer scholarship
He never shared thoughts
About himself
Just Theocritus and Virgil
Let him dry on the lawn
Let the sunlight speak to him
Empedocles’ Estate Sale
You cannot see this thought
rising to heaven old and stale--
scaly body and forked tail.
Beyond any kind of order.
Beyond the stares of your father.
Inevitably made of history.
A rheumatic reliquary
arranged like spokes of mind--
the radiation of a certitude
Released. Smear a little spittle
from your mouth on the horizon
while it arduously ascends.
The trees may talk to you.
In Lieu of an Epilogue
It does not speak to this
any longer
the subject of love
It does not speak
the dry mouth
swollen tongue
It does not
prevaricate
resplendent
It does
distant speechless
as the sky
Robert F. Gross is a playwright, director, and poet who currently lives in Rochester, New York but is preparing to hop a freighter to Hamburg. His work has recently appeared in Wilde Oats, Danse Macabre, BoySlut and Philosophy After Dark.
Lift his body out of the pond
He’s dead isn’t he
A pile of paperbacks
A wrought iron chair
A basket of white geraniums
A boy in a three-piece suit
At the height of summer scholarship
He never shared thoughts
About himself
Just Theocritus and Virgil
Let him dry on the lawn
Let the sunlight speak to him
Empedocles’ Estate Sale
You cannot see this thought
rising to heaven old and stale--
scaly body and forked tail.
Beyond any kind of order.
Beyond the stares of your father.
Inevitably made of history.
A rheumatic reliquary
arranged like spokes of mind--
the radiation of a certitude
Released. Smear a little spittle
from your mouth on the horizon
while it arduously ascends.
The trees may talk to you.
In Lieu of an Epilogue
It does not speak to this
any longer
the subject of love
It does not speak
the dry mouth
swollen tongue
It does not
prevaricate
resplendent
It does
distant speechless
as the sky
Robert F. Gross is a playwright, director, and poet who currently lives in Rochester, New York but is preparing to hop a freighter to Hamburg. His work has recently appeared in Wilde Oats, Danse Macabre, BoySlut and Philosophy After Dark.
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