3 poems by Robert Beveridge

Float

Bills change hands. The politician
keeps a pen in his pocket for autographs
a separate one for thorazine injections.

Babies require handshakes. He has
an unreasonable fear of bridges.
Wind across the elms banks left,
sends another flock of laws across the mall.

Only in cherry blossom season
is this kind of graft common,
or even permitted. Two hunters
in camouflage raise their twelve-
gauges, gaze through scopes.
Monkeys cling to the Jefferson Memorial. 


 


Ostensible

The bomb disposal unit are on their way,
they say, but the suitcase is strapped
to a Roomba, bounces around the patio.
Each person who watches it discerns
a different pattern; one sees the sigil
of a thieves’ guild defunct five hundred
years, another the step diagram for the next
trendy dance. Et cetera. Each interpretation
is correct; each interpretation is wrong.

When the team arrives, surrounds
the field of play with their plexiglass
shields, the sun’s reflection dances
from place to place, eye to eye,
creates a pattern of its own.
Everyone stops, mesmerized.
All is still except the click and whirr,
click and whirr of the cleaner
and its cargo, whatever that may be.




  
Spirit Cooking

We lifted our voices in song,
composed a Threnody for the Victims
of Lordstown, backed with an Industrial
Concerto for Rust and Broken Glass.
Some escaped, fled to Tennessee, Michigan,
Indiana. The rest went home, sent
their kids to school, filled out applications.

We asked with blood, with blood and earth,
with song, with song and blood, we asked
for birth, for birth and growth, for growth
and blood, for blood and song, for song
and earth, for earth and growth, for the cycle

that pushes blood into steel, into glass,
into lights and machines and a factory
that may not have followed so many
of its brothers and sisters in the grave.

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Robert Beveridge (he/him) makes noise (xterminal.bandcamp.com) and writes poetry in Akron, OH. Recent/upcoming appearances in Of Rust and Glass, The Museum of Americana, and Quill and Parchment, among others.

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