A Poetry Sporadical of Repeating Forms
A Poetry Sporadical of Repeating Forms
By my request, Nirvana’s “In Bloom” repeated during the operation.
By my request, Nirvana’s “In Bloom” repeated during the operation.
I was cauterized as I listened to Kurt’s voice again: Sell the kids for food.
I was cauterized as I listened to Kurt’s voice again: Sell the kids for food.
I requested Kurt, too—food during the nirvana—as I was listening for
my cauterized kids’ voices, sold by the operation, repeating, “In Bloom” again!
Hungry, I waited as the guitar chords powered through the doctor’s spring chatter.
Hungry, I waited as the guitar chords powered through the doctor’s spring chatter.
My name ended like the smell of smoke. And my refrain repeats, He don’t know what it means.
My name ended like the smell of smoke. And my refrain repeats, He don’t know what it means.
The guitar doesn’t know what it means, the hungry smoke smelling like spring.
The doctor repeated my name and waited through the refrain of my eyes, power chords ending as he chattered.
I approached my infertility as a man, embracing whatever it is because it is the sky.
I approached my infertility as a man, embracing whatever it is because it is the sky.
The sun repeats its song every morning, brutal and gentle like Kurt’s voice.
The sun repeats its song every morning, brutal and gentle like Kurt’s voice.
And every brutal son mourns whatever it is my eyes embrace. The gentle voice
approaches it as man because, like Kurt’s songs, the sky is repeating its infertility.
I waited as the smoke powered through because, like the spring sun during my operation,
my voice and my hungry name were embraced by a man’s infertility. The doctor approached
as the guitar chattered, as it ended. Kurt’s voice was brutal food selling its songs for kids;
he is the sky in bloom. I listen to what it means: the smell of every morning, chords cauterized, nirvana.
Whatever, I don’t know, I like it. Kurt, my gentle request:
the refrains repeating, repeating, and repeating again.
Anthony Frame is an exterminator who lives in Toledo, Ohio with his wife. His first chapbook, Paper Guillotines, was published by Imaginary Friend Press and recent poems have been published in or are forthcoming from Harpur Palate, Blood Orange Review, Third Coast, The Meadowland Review, and Bigger Than They Appear: An Anthology of Very Short Poems (Accents Publishing, 2011), among others. He is also the co-founder and co-editor of Glass: A Journal of Poetry. Visit his website.