A Yearning for Anyone Else
At this party
we all dump our iPhones
into the Adderall aquarium
pay attention
there’s dancing
being poor
my ex tells me, “Poetry is
the only job
you’ve ever wanted”
Prosecco snowflakes
start falling
from the ceiling
bad batch of coke on the Ouija board
& the ghost of Helen Keller
appears before me
she throws my aviator sunglasses
on the floor & dances on them
my friend tells me, “Love is like
a pile of raincoats
in the middle of the desert
stop waiting for the rain
be surprised”
I can’t remember the last time I made out
maybe when Obama was still
leader of the free world
I like to think that when we’re asleep
our unused tongues leave our mouths
meet up in an America
where Obama is still President
Elegy for David Berman or When It Starts Snowing in Your Head, Imagine a Green Hill Instead
The moment I come home from work, I’m like
“Alexa, play me Silver Jews,” because David Berman is dead
hung himself at the age of 52. When the news dropped
I was scrolling through Twitter while running around
a large unfurnished room in a snow globe of an office building
in Buffalo, NY, a city where your thoughts are always crystallized in ice
even in the summertime, so every three hours, as mandated
by the State, we run around in all directions in a designated space
shaking the psychotic snowmen out of our brains, sometimes
they limply roll out of our ears like forgettable music, other times
they’re violent & unforgettable refusing to leave, it takes forever
to push them out of our mouths like music that hurts the heart
& we don’t want them to leave because when they do, it’s like
reverse frostbite & that’s just torturous, sometimes the numbness
is all we have to remind us that we still feel. Anyway, after bashing
our heads in, we go back to our desks, the snowless humidity
building basements of new songs we desperately need to hear
but they’re always just out of reach, so we wither away
unlike those shambolic flowers on a green hill in someone else’s imagination
we always wanna be there instead, instead of this, it seems so lush
& promising, the brackish bloom of youth, young people
who just graduated from high school, the day after the big day
& they’re frolicking on that green hill collecting chestnuts
that are more like grenades, how they throw ‘em at the sun
an exercise in boastfulness, we’ll burn brighter than you
when all is said & done, we never want to be unreleased
but sometimes fate is a lobbyist working for someone
who hates you, who has more money than you do, so it might be
out of your freelancing hands, a boomerang or an eye roll
will you lead astray, but hopefully you’ll live like a shoreline
a transcendent carrier of ships or dreams, even if you
never leave your motel room, even if your gravity shifts
& you end up singing alone, a casual bummer but extra-empathetic
almost joyous. Anyway, I’m feeling mildly psychedelic
back at my place & Alexa refuses to gift me the voice
I want to hear right now, instead she goes silent, then it starts
raining eyelashes in my kitchen & my cat’s going crazy
maybe a revelation: these are the wishes we all keep buried in our gut
maybe we shouldn’t, maybe we should listen to the singers
look for desire that actually burns, what makes Earth special
is that it’s the only planet we know of that has life & music
I guess that’s okay for now, that there will always be voices
in the snow, on that green hill, in the heat, on the radio
Justin Karcher (Twitter: @Justin_Karcher. Instagram: the.man.about.town) is a Best of the Net- and Pushcart-nominated poet and playwright born and raised in Buffalo, New York. He is the author of several books, including Tailgating at the Gates of Hell (Ghost City Press, 2015). He is also the editor of Ghost City Review and co-editor of the anthologies My Next Heart: New Buffalo Poetry (BlazeVOX [books], 2017) and MANSION (dancing girl press, 2019).