East of Emmaus

By Michał Zieliński

All flows together, even if so painfully slow.
The baptized & the doves tweet in bursts,
Johnny got the back of his neck Brazilian waxed,
but he ain’t gonna spoil none for Leif & Chris,
& I talk too much, so we’re just being cute & innocent ab it.

Then Josh comes by, like “Hey, wanna see a trick?”
So he makes Jordan run with Bud Light & turns pebbles into chips.
The air went putrid, the poisoned tilapia floating about,
but it was then that me & the Messiah turned friends for life
& I felt a glowing ribbon emerging from my hair whorl.

1 night, Josh tells me to split myself in 2 to go
both beyond the pillars of Hercules & north of Danube.
“What the heck man? What is there for me to do?
I’m too old to be a rapper, too young to be a millennial!”
But before I replied he was already making out with Jude.

When they took him down, I left the town, once sweet like the wine
of quarter-term night, now gross like the pukes the morning after.
So under this onion-cutting sky of steel it’s just me & a homez of mine,
& half of a cig we’ll pass till it gets so short it burns our fingers
& just drops on the stony road. Your story ends here. Ours didn’t.

homeric Oregano

FNAP! it’s summertime,         it’s Oregano time.       purple
flowers,           torches in the daylight,           spades of green,
leaves with peach hair.           i came to talk, perennial
son of the basin.          between us the roaring vacuum of time,

the abyss of white       peering from between letters,
the silence       between nondescript syllables.
NOOOOOOO!            the brightness of the mountain
is the sole common     waypoint. we will never be lovelier

than we are now.         get it offa me! Time! i can’t stand it,
i can accept only not too hot summers           before i’m old again.
YEAH             opposite leaves           follow the burning,
cracking into murmurs            i struggle to transcribe into

straw circles.   faces carry what’s lost.            LE’S GOOO!  Yin —
there is            the heat of Love,         irresistible.                 Yang —
the cold lemonade       gulped from below,     running down
soft stones.      the beverage is a matchmaker, our bumblebee.

eyes locked, we swerve.         though it’s a thing of the past,
gone Soon after constant laws                        like the ice cubes melting,
watering down the ambrosia.              taste the pain! bless
the inflorescence, late but still!          cheer before the Ulp!

Baby Car

                                    One newborn car tried to
                                    carry me into the air in its bout,
                                             for a glimpse at grander perspective,
                                             for a fleeting touch of Death,
                                             for a cliffhanger,
                                             for a moment of uncertainty.

     James is gonna save them.
                                                            I murmured in the dark,
                                                teetering on the twin sharp points
                                                of solitary orchid scissors.
                                                This means they’re frozen until the next episode,
                                                            screaming in the corner,
                                                                                                   but safe.

                                    Cats are born blind & deaf, but into mother’s warmth.
                                    Cars are born complete, but cast alone into cold superposition
          dormant
                                                                                                                                       volant
                                    meant to viciously race each other since infancy.

                                  This driver was mad his brand new ride
                                  got scratched. I tried my best not to yell.
                                                It was a baby car after all.

Frank O’Hara Eyes on My Wings

I recognized a lamp, started flap after flap,
charcoal trace from the trunk to the nose, a thread of a rod
to the fresco, like the settling ashes — still warm & nameless.
Half-words come thru giggles, a great psalm in this space of interruptions.

I let it drip, the teary sand in some hourglass, even if
time & time again I mourn the years gone where
what’s real history is a mystery & all the truth drowned
the moment a moment is no longer now. Just like this one.

Me? I’m no witness, just a passerby. Don’t you worry, paddle on
to the lake’s apple, where the moon likes to swing doubled,
where the sand regroups & lovers’ sweet words soften
further into the abyss, under the algae powerhouses regime.

Up & down, here I go, no note taken,
just a postcard to be eased between unread pages,
erroneous navigation due to no fault of mine,
a little out-of-character irony to smile at — once by the light.

Hell Parade at Szczeliniec

Backpacks against chests,
sponges of sweat, jammed
between dried seas. A weekend

trip down the walls that
speak but can’t hear. Made
in their shape, for our times,

ever so slowly, down that
throat, where tomfoolery
is mass murder, we tiptoe.

BIO

Michał Zieliński lives in Poland’s Lower Silesia. His writing has appeared or is forthcoming in The Metaworker, Wayward & Upward anthology, The River, and elsewhere.