Bryan D. Price ~ Three Poems

Pear tree, 1941

Train track runs par­al­lel to coun­try
road. Uncommonly plebian for­est. A riv­er
to music. It was too hot to work in the fields
that day. But I am a cow with cow tongue
and cow eyes. Smoke ris­es, cur­tails, becomes

one with the air. What I wouldn’t give
to be air. To be nil. O divine hawk, Christ
did smile here. The sky was emp­ty and
the Boulevard Haussmann was very busy.
I knew these places well. There were

cer­e­monies of ini­ti­a­tion. The burn­ing wheel was
a pow­er­ful one and we did thus defile it, for
it pro­duced rain. And then from rain so many
bee­tles. False ones, impris­oned, like teeth.

~

Our youth

1. Some birds

The gods sent eagles. Swallows hiber­nate
in win­ter. Maybe we won’t see our­selves
sleep­ing in squats and halfway hous­es again.
Probably I would have been work­ing at the
insur­ance bureau; haunt­ed by a dol­phin. I nev­er
men­tioned any oth­er mys­ti­cal expe­ri­ences.
(I am at the end) I can give you these. 

2. Ringstraße

An octo­pus has col­or-chang­ing
capa­bil­i­ties which in both sex­es are always
hid­den. In my dreams any­one could
swim, which I did (through a glass wall
between two chapels). I didn’t think of a
win­dow. She fired a gun once in a Viennese
hotel. We are not already dead.

~

Vigil

We break­fast­ed togeth­er.
Over the next six days, we see each oth­er
every day but one.
It was a strug­gle.
Another tac­tic is auto­mat­ic draw­ing,
some oth­er advice from the sur­re­al­ist man­i­festos—
a long pas­sage about nest­ing mechan­i­cal birds who make noise  

in the leaf-lit­ter.
You stand before a sun­lit win­dow.
Each age has its own dark­ness,
more machines,
pic­tures of human hearts,
phan­tom limbs,
or some­thing eeri­ly similar.

~

Bryan D. Price is the author of A Plea for Secular Gods: Elegies (What Books, 2023) His sto­ries and poems have appeared or are forth­com­ing in Noon Annual, Epiphany Magazine, EPOCH, The Glacier, and else­where. He lives in San Diego, California.