JEREMIAH MORIARTY
In the Mood to Be Ill
peculiar how the show depends
ultimately on an exchange a salute
among soma a sweet hello and
a wordless exit Now by trick of origin
my trace essentia are preserved through two
plastic cylinders, candy-filled and too seemingly innocuous
to draw much attention like twinned icebergs
joined beneath the tides or last month’s man
and his empty profile It’s only synapses alight an invisible
parliament voting no confidence but I sure wish
I had a crown Last night I broke and brought
the two bottles close whispered: So who throws
the pigeon and who pulls the trigger?
––––
Short Movie
The idea comes to me flickering
like a short movie, granular and hot
as it throws itself up. Everything is
cradled in the frame there, celluloid banger
of dust, dreaming, non-diegetic
yearning. I see your happy faces emerge,
smiling in a paradise I do not
recognize—you two, a study of revenge
in black-and-white. The screen has
fixed boundaries, yes, but I know
it has to be that way. It’s been
a minute. What happens next?
War, of course. Death planes fly straight
like maple-lined lanes in the suburbs
you left. Like the person you were
when you lived there. I wonder: will you
bring him home? Fade to black.
Now the credits roll, big
letters rising in the blankness
as if to say—
––––
Jeremiah Moriarty is a writer from Minneapolis. His poems and stories have appeared in The Rumpus, Puerto del Sol, swamp pink, No Tokens, The Cortland Review, and elsewhere.