Thursday, March 11, 2021

Eric Mohrman - 4 poems

 1 Electrocardiogram



The city structures are an irregular 

EKG readout. or a sprawling

symphony. the 

drunks


wobble in the crescendo and slosh


down crisp whiskey 

while 


the fluorescent moonlight illuminates all those


hearts that 

slowly 

beat themselves out


***
2 White


In 

the winter, the

conifers morph into 


snow

angels, their 


cold stubby cocks 

sing carols.


She whistles and skips viscera across the frozen lake; he


looks up from the page and squeals, “I can tell you

love me by the way you 

italicize me!”


This is 

a poem a-

bout the death of Jack Spicer.


***
3
Diminishing Returns


Fog plods down the street in silent

shapes of buffalo. go. begrudgingly trudging through the

mud and sludge of memory. we're never

alone when we can't 

remember anybody else. ember limbs enclosing limber

lovers. briefly luminous. in lopsided homes with 

aluminum siding. along long lonely 

lanes with overused names. quaint


revisionism. makes saints of winners. history's

unoriginal sin. circling 

slowly. perpetually reducing speed by half

at irregular intervals so never coming to a


stop. this stuttering streetscape. your staggered

speech. your strutting sentimentality. the ashen striation 

of stratus clouds. the stammering light of the 


stars. straddling bridges. straying through time like lost

elopers. the scope is 

abridged. the outlook grim. the inlook grievous.


***
4 Pathology


Fire ants flow along a sidewalk crack. clouds flout

form, floating shapelessly toward

some other place. your mother had 

crazy gray wispy cirrus hair. With an


involuntary virility, you hallucinate

fat monks in summer in a circle disrobing in a cul-de-sac positioned precisely in

some suburban samsara. so sweaty. so

yesterday.

so


much time squandered finding so

much pointless purpose. Wandering


deep into the night. stopping 


sporadically to read Wilde in the gutter, paranoid that the  

stars are looking at you.



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