Where It Can Be Written
by Glenn Ingersoll
it was late but it was getting earlier
the earlier it got the more I had to fart
I was alone with the regal bubble
surely I was dreaming
I have no luck in dreaming
I had another bad idea which was the same one
my cat was snoring
I can’t sleep when my cat is snoring
I took medicine to go with the pain
listen – my intestines are singing
they don’t know how to sing
I know how to sing the wrong way
I played with the bad idea as if it were fun
it could get funner
my cat is my friend but is he, really
there’s a psychological term useful here
this is not a good position
my arm’s gone to sleep
congratulations, arm
fuck you, God! – I heard the Christian say
all the books are curses and nails
and pounded blood
only children are paper
the rest of us are bad ideas
there are places on which bad ideas can be scratched
but of all talking we need to claw
let’s not talk about the available skin
let’s talk up our divinatory alleys
there’s one down the center of the room
and a cat
another cat, seeing I’m sitting up
has come too
333
awake at 3:33 a.m.
what do you know
was reading a book of drug experiences
mostly psychedelics
learning experiences, some mystic
I hear the cats playing upstairs
rambunctious!
knocking something around
I pick up the flashlight by my bed
tiptoe after its circle
as I crest the top step
I hear a scramble to the back room
the cat flap’s slap
I open the human door and play
my light across the porch until two circles gleam back
from a broad band of black above a
sharp gray snout and a little growl
the bathroom linoleum slippery
the kibble dish empty
the water used to rinse a paw not clean
K, who’s followed me up, blocks the flap
with a bucket full of cat litter
was it a small raccoon? he asks
I say it was
the two orangies curl up by me
the black tabby checks in
I go back to reading
more on the drugs
some poetry
Mr. Smith
white? chapped-lips white
and folded and folded and folded
tight as a bud
or mouth sucking a secret like a hard mint
if I hold the paper by two corners
the letter curls, a giant petal
but if I bend it back, change
the direction of the creases
find words like a dusting of pollen
my fingers the thighs of honeybees
but this is a sore blossom
it doesn’t know how sweet it is
how sweet like a mouth
biting its lips to stifle
what is not unconscious on the tongue
no, it is not a mouth I press open
to words smeared slightly by movement
but what got said to a page to me
printed atop a rose bows
also just beginning to open
tipped toward one looking up
BIO
Glenn Ingersoll works for the Berkeley Public Library where he hosts Clearly Meant, a thrice-yearly reading & interview series. He has two chapbooks: City Walks (broken boulder) and Fact (Avantacular). He keeps two blogs: LoveSettlement and Dare I Read. Recent work has appeared in Poetry East, Askew, Futures Trading, and BlazeVOX.