Glenn Shaheen

Glass

Morally no I don't
Star the important
Bits I don't hold
Onto the empty
Digital protests of
Friends and former
Lovers but I've got
A lot to lose their
Anger all sudden
Where was it before
My white friends
Don't feel bad about
It turn your burning
Glass to the sun
It can be lethal in
This climate but it
Already was lethal
For people like me

divider

 

Inner Rose and Outer Rose

Me, I’ve got anger,
my insides a roiling

cloud of bones, a relic
that still inexplicably

works. Your name a
divine thumb and

doom light, my teeth
ground down to neck.

My anger is not specific,
always, I try not to be

object of gawker's block.
A celebrity embraces

a pain I run from and I
can’t understand it. My

anger, it’s an engine all
gummed up. I breathe

in its bubbled mess but
it doesn’t stick to my lungs

like before, it slowly peels
away like noodles test-flicked

at a kitchen cupboard.
Humor is a cure, sure, the

extra clown in the car
that causes them all

to suffocate horribly. Anger,
I would like to break

something expensive,
something irreplaceable, but

I cannot afford that kind
of anger. I came across

a dead dog that looked like
it was sleeping. I brought

it water and nothing happened,
raw meat, the same.

 


Glenn Shaheen is the author of the poetry collections Predatory (U Pitt Press, 2011), and Energy Corridor (U Pitt Press, 2016); the flash fiction chapbook Unchecked Savagery (Ricochet Editions, 2013); and the flash fiction collection Carnivalia (Gold Wake, 2018).