May 2, 2022

Poems by Marc Vincenz

A MEETING ON WATERWAYS

It seems all the light of morning has descended here where it’s usually dark and frogs raise their heads in the bulrushes, where the last sounds swarm among the oaks. Weighing these few scraps, the things you’ve said you leapt gardens to procure—there are still more feathers on this side—hard work, all that feather versus fodder. Tomorrow—what a difficult word—interrupted and intercepted, and tomorrow, all that we imagined.

Careful.

The walls have ears.


IT WAS ONLY HALF-PAST FOUR

And the café was full—what wasn’t talked about?

The ghastly heat, the dreadful shitting pigeons with their weirdly bulbous eyes, and the eczema that followed, a few spots of blood, or those stickers that read, “To be continued.”


IN THOSE WILY OLD WAYS

Dear Denise,
Above, but below
For those in the know, don’t

Listen to rumors, much
Of the news has yet
To be delivered.

In the dark and early hours,
The wind ticks, and the wee
Perfume separates

In the thread and weave
Of those lounging chairs.
In the packs of clouds,

And in they-who-created-
Many, multitudes,
A plentitude of questions.

Whether you know it
Or not, gratitude
In no fool; she sifts

Adroitly through
The garbage, across
Islands and lakes …

Or by the nature
Of all these exclusions,
With this letter, I thee wed.

Poem by Stephen Bett

Novel Lines 101:  101 alphabetical poems, each riffing on the opening line of a postmodern novel or metafiction. Antonio Lobo Antunes, Act o...