DRECK

SAM O'BRIEN

LOVE AND OTHER COMETS

I thought I was a closed system, but I'm connected to Jupiter
whether I like it or not. Life progresses not by tiny steps but in
huge leaps across pits of death on the wings of impact craters,
things I never posessed now coming to me from without, like the
shut-in neighbor dropping cloves of garlic from her window.

I can't explain this stratum of my skin, it was a strange love which
did that to me, sulfurous and suffocating, a goodbye to everyone
who was alive when the bolide revealed our prize: a life
underground, an inversion of the window as our eyes spun around
to give us a chance to see what's really behind our paintboxes.

Catastrophe used to mean something much worse. Now we hear it
with our hands over our mouths, trying not to let on that we are
laughing. Look at the zinnia next to the window, fully watered
and withering. They will die in plain sight. We won't be so lucky.
And so we wait for the comets to pass by, knowing nothing more.


DRIFTERS

The belay broke today
though, somehow, we slept through it. In the
morning, we find ourselves on the ground
with the farmer standing over us,
distance inside of his gaze.

The storm will stay with us tomorrow
so try to find the comet tonight, swimming
through years to our eyes, and maybe
we're doing the same: every day
we reach a stranger, stranger star
then come back home to our cold bed.

A desperate dash toward last week, for
the sweetness of a world unmade, like
the bed we rose from that one evening:
honey-colored hours sliming the walls
until it was time to feed our children

Sam O'Brien lives in Los Angeles and writes for Midday Sunrise Music Reviews. At this very moment, he is baking cookies for his friend.