It seems just yesterday we were out on the parapets
demanding an audience with congress.
Took turns admiring the parade of self-inflicted wounds.
Now empty shells make lonely topics of conversation
and so do the well-oiled pistols collecting dust behind glass.
We’ve run out of things to rally against.
About dinnertime, every spoon of the recent past tastes insipid.
Old women’s breasts flop onto the table;
men claim elbow room and pull at their graying beards —
their bandoliers limp on a hook on a door
along with the wool coat and rabbit fur hat.
A crushed fire burning in every living room ashtray.
The 2015 Luminaire Award for Best Poetry
FINALIST
We are pleased to announce this poem as a Notable Mention for The 2015 Luminaire Award for Best Poetry, honoring the independent press’ best poems of the year. The winners are selected by an external panel that judges all pieces blindly and selects the full list of 12 finalists from hundreds of entries. Alternating Current does not determine the final outcome for the judging; the external judges’ decisions are final. Notable Mentions receive publication on The Coil and printed publication in the forthcoming literary journal, Poiesis Review #7.
ANDREI GURUIANU was born in 1979 in Bucharest, Romania. He is the author of more than a dozen books of poetry and prose, and currently teaches in the Expository Writing Program at New York University. You can find him at his website.
Poem originally published on 4/8/15
