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Editor's
Note
Guidelines
SNR's
Writers
Mail
These
poems were reprinted from Stephen Gyllenhaal's new book from
Cantarabooks LLC. It's entitled Claptrap. For more
information or to buy the book, click this link.
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Land
of the Free
Can't disney this away,
can't prozac it back
into the warm sofa
of this once
obedient chest.
The grand chandelier
that's turning like
a satellite
demanding utter allegiance
and the closer
attention
that should have been paid
to grammar, to the
names
and statistics of all
the ballplayers
has lost
its grip
on the color pink
mistaking it
for the space
between
the first and second
amendments.
Communion
It's
not a big thing
when the BMW pulls over
silver blue and
German grace
and the Guatemalan gardener adjusts his hip
along the nearby ridge
with his leaf blower and rake
half noting the pure white man inside
with his acceptable
rock music
choking
weeping
hands shivering over the
eyes
weeping till the cows come home
weeping for whatever
nameless loss
he's found
as Guatemala
back and forth
with his machine
sweeps the rattling leaves
along a green
back of Nichols Canyon
like a priest with incense.
The
Enron in My Face
The Enron in my face
is unmistakable
for I have borrowed millions
against the
accounts of my father,
secreting them in the hope chest
of
my parents' wedding dreams:
a large pine box affair
with
a red heart painted
on the upside-down lid.
Though we
kept the creditors at bay
for generations by appearing to
scrub
the dishes with soap and misery,
it fell to me to
lose sight of the ball completely
and seal the bankruptcy.
I must now let the Lear jet of it fade,
head into the
desert outside Houston,
find as many false gods as I can
and pray.
As with indigestion, I keep telling myself
I
had only a little to do with it,
but the overeating of
desserts gives me away.
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