Nick Flynn Poems
- 1. Twenty-pound Stone
It nests in the hollow of my pelvis, I carry it with both hands, as if
offering my stomach, as if it were pulling me forward.
At night the sun leaks from it, it turns cold, I sleep with it
... - 2. Embrace Noir
I go back to the scene where the two men embrace
& grapple a handgun at stomach level between them.
They jerk around the apartment like that
... - 3. Amber
Hover
the imagined center, our tongues
grew long to please it, licking
... - 4. Emptying Town
I want to erase your footprints
from my walls. Each pillow
is thick with your reasons. Omens
... - 5. Alan Dugan Telling Me I Have A Problem With Time
He reads my latest attempt at a poem
and is silent for a long time, until it feels
like that night we waited for Apollo,
my mother wandering in and out of her bedroom, asking,
... - 6. You Asked How (formerly Even Now She Is Turning, Saying Everything I Always Wanted Her To Say)
At the end there were straws
in her glove compartment, I'd split them open
to taste the familiar bitter residue, near the end
I ate all her Percodans, hungry to know
... - 7. Bag Of Mice
I dreamt your suicide note
was scrawled in pencil on a brown paperbag,
& in the bag were six baby mice. The bag
opened into darkness,
... - 8. Cartoon Physics, Part 1
Children under, say, ten, shouldn't know
that the universe is ever-expanding,
inexorably pushing into the vacuum, galaxies
... - 9. Statuary
Bees may be trusted, always,
to discover the best, nay, the only
human, solution. Let me cite
...
