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    Birthday Girl With Possum
    Birthday Girl With Possum
    Birthday Girl With Possum
    Ebook93 pages31 minutes

    Birthday Girl With Possum

    By Brendan Constantine

    ()

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    About this ebook

    Heartbreaking and hilarious poems reaffirming our youngest conclusions about the world. Known for his dreamy abstraction and the emotional ferocity on the page and on the stage, this is a birthday card from the phenomenal world to our wildest selves. No approach to writing (odes, codes, lectures, letters, tests and attendance sheets) is left unexploited as a means to poetry. This is his second collection.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherWrite Bloody Publishing
    Release dateDec 21, 2011
    ISBN9781935904366
    Birthday Girl With Possum
    Author

    Brendan Constantine

    is a poet based in LA. His work has appeared in numerous journals, most notably Ploughshares, Ninth Letter, ArtLife, The Cortland Review and Runes. His new work is forthcoming in Field Rattle, Redivider, and Verse Wisconsin. His collection, Letters To Guns, was released in 2009 from Red Hen Press. He is currently poet-in-residence at The Windward School and Loyola Marymount University Extension. In addition, he offers workshops in hospitals, foster and elder care centers, and shelters for the homeless. In 2002 he was nominee for Poet Laureate for California.

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      Book preview

      Birthday Girl With Possum - Brendan Constantine

      Possum

      The Favor of Your Company

      There would be no sand,

      there would be no sea,

      no straw, no bird, no tree

      in a window, no window

      There would be no shadow,

      there would be no lamp,

      no word, no letter, no stamp

      from France, no France,

      no feast, no reason to dance,

      for no reason at all

      had a coat not hung on a wall,

      had not a cup been spilled

      & laughed about

      & filled

      Part I

      The House

      of the

      World

      "The mad one is gone, leaving the house of the world

      in my charge and keeping. It is a ruined house,

      left from fool to fool."

      —Bektashi folklore

      Noct

      I was com

      You said you would wai

      Twelve hundred miles in a day—

      I counted houses, then their ligh

      Came home to an empt

      Not even my shir

                    my green shir

      Are you wearing it now?

      It’s hot, the house is hot; the walls,

      even the handle on the refr

      What the f

      What can anyone hope to keep?

      If either of us could answer,

      wou

      1981

      I learned the word disaster meant against the stars,

      learned it did not apply to this world; the sky intended

      every cruelty.

      I watched the boy with no legs draw

      pictures of feet for an hour in Study Hall.

      In the hall

      of my uncle’s rest home I heard the paper voice of a man

      so old he’d forgotten he was blind. When a nurse passed

      his door, he’d ask Turn the lights on, would you?

      I learned sadness like a way home from school. I got in

      later and later. Some nights I didn’t come back at all

      but sat up waiting for myself.

      I passed Geography,

      History, & Spanish for the last time. My cat died.

      My dog turned grey. My physics teacher was hit

      by an ambulance.

      But I read a book & understood it.

      A woman asked me to touch her body. I did.

      I wrote

      my first poem. It said people were like moons. I believed

      what I wrote, believed I had done all my writing, wouldn’t

      do anymore.

      Then I believed a book that said the oleanders

      behind our house were poison. All summer I dreamed

      of meeting someone I could feed one brutal flower.

      The Manager

      My daughters learned to sing

      in your bathroom. The acoustics

      made them feel famous. Their father

      died cleaning your carpet, though I

      suspect it was the strain of carrying

      your sink up three flights that did it.

      I mourned him & finished the rug.

      My daughters have daughters & they

      pass your door when they visit.

      They wonder if you’re nice. I say

      I don’t know; simpler than asking

      why it matters. Just as each time

      someone leaves me, the landlord

      doesn’t apologize. He offers me

      something smaller & I accept.

      It’s how I manage. I make room.

      Poem Ending on a Line

      by the Department of Water and Power

      Someone is always playing a drum.

      The birds are each a different color

      and the volcano is new. We call this

      the

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