Two New Poems from Ryan Collins

Dear Madison—

                                    Cakes & stacks counted, our tinsel steerage

            stretched to the seam-splitting.  The undoing of mass &

            matter reveals a particle god at the stone-sharpened edge

            of light speed.  Do-on’t stop/believing, o undetoxed brother! 

            Our leathers toughen despite retreating glaciers, despite

            lower case wind chills.  So what everything isn’t frozen—

            do we ever fully thaw?  It’s hard to lament bike racks &

scraped elm braches & parking meters not appearing as
giant novelty ice cubes twelve weeks out of the year.  Of

course there are accounts to be paid.  The storms of this

            century have fuckall to do with weather.  More the climate. 

            We shake & chandelier w/out putting boots on the ceiling,

            closer to boots on the moon, boot to the Kool, the steel-

toed kick in the face blasting you awake, your short term

memory clouded & hacked.  We are corrupted files.  We

corrupt the clouds as we accelerate through an infinity of

            blind left turns & prayer w/ each breath to be obliterated

& fully incorporated into the light of our thin-aired maker.   

  

from The Challenger Deep

Giant waves rise   plates fold

The sea floor roars back in

To deep sea   microphones

Capture    the sound being

Destroyed   pulsing through

Bodies   collapsing every gap

Every space air hides   into

Shatter   bolt-like graves litter

The ocean’s floor   fifty tons

Of gasoline   absorbed no fire

No heat to float to the surface

Waves seven miles down rise

Consume the surface warmth

The deep’s pressure summoned    

Ryan Collins is the author of three chapbooks, most recently Dear Twin Falls (H_NGM_N, forthcoming 2013).  His poems can be, or will be, found in American Letters & Commentary; DIAGRAM; Forklift, Ohio; Handsome; H_NGM_N; Ilk; iO: A Journal of New American Poetry; Scud; Smoking Glue Gun; Spork; Transom; the Hell Yes Press cassette anthology 21 Love Poems; and many other places.  He is the executive director of the Midwest Writing Center and an English instructor at St. Ambrose University.  He plays drums in The Multiple Cat and lives in Rock Island, IL.