LIMP WRIST Pushcart Nom: Jeremy Glazier

Here is another poem nominated from Limp Wrist:

Circuit Party

Beautiful boys with glistening skin,
their eyes aglaze with ecstasy,
wait for the night to come full circuit,
bare—-chested and thrusting to a rhythm.

If their eyes are aglaze with ecstasy,
their hearts and minds are ablaze with love,
bare—-chested and thrusting to a rhythm
they won't remember in the morning.

Their hearts and minds indeed blaze with love,
or what they think of as love.
But they won't remember in the morning
the things they whisper to one another.

What they think of as love
is the pulse they feel beneath the music.
The things they whisper to one another
on the dance floor shimmer just out of reach.

What is that pulse they feel beneath the music?
Something primitive, that keeps them moving.
On the dance floor, shimmering just out of reach,
they somehow understand what is to come.

Something primitive keeps us moving,
like beautiful boys with glistening skin.
Somehow we too understand what is. Come.
Wait for the night to come full circuit.

~ Jeremy Glazier

LIMP WRIST Pushcart Nom: Kurt Brown

Here is another poem nominated from Limp Wrist:

APOLOGY FOR A HAPPY CHILDHOOD

It was not my fault. I had no say in the matter. From the beginning, my parents conspired to
subvert my ambition to be a poet: "No juicy material for him," they agreed. Like Roberto
Benigni's son in "Life is Beautiful", or little Gautama Buddha safe in the enclosure of his father's
castle walls, all ugliness and pain were kept from me. Death and the ephemeral were not my
playmates. When a puppy died, or a toy lay broken on the living room floor, my eyes were
blindfolded and I was whisked away and told that all would be well. And when the blindfold
was removed: it was! There stood a new puppy, and a shining toy, resurrected and whole, as
good as the original. Even better. I thought it was the original, that all things healed themselves
instantly, and from within. It was a joyous world, Eden without sin, without a fall, and I—its
little Adam-strutting around ignorant of apples, and sexless.

There were no clocks in my childhood, and mirrors were banished. In autumn, I was kept
indoors. When I went outside, it was always summer. The sun stood in the middle of the sky, and
before it went down I was brought back inside where lights burned merrily. And when I slept,
even my dreams were monitored, so when I whimpered or cried out someone caressed my brow
and woke me, only to rock me back to sleep again, singing. What had I to dream about! Morning
was a flood of light in which I basked, and I was fed with utensils made of pure gold. This could
go on forever, without tears or blood.

And then suddenly one day-when no one was looking-I wrote my first poem.

~Kurt Brown

LIMP WRIST Pushcart Nom: Jessica Hand

Over the next few weeks, I am going to post the poems from Limp Wrist that have been nominated for the Pushcart.

Here is the first I will share:


ODE TO MY PENTECOSTAL RIGHT ARM

The live wire writhed: a Pentecostal copperhead
sinking fangs into my ulnar nerve—dendrites convulsed
in the Spirit and passed out, synapses crashed
like stalactites loosened from God's cavernous mouth,
and for the first genuine time I spoke in another tongue.
Can I get an amen? Can I get a man who doesn't mind
my arm throwing spaghetti and calling for revival?
My right arm contracts and gives birth to a new baby Jesus
once each minute, and He's got a holy set of lungs screaming.
This arm awakens and dances at night when He gathers
his loincloth for a jig. God is boogie-woogie electric,
and my arm knows it, knows there's a pulsing, painful
purgatory, has met eternity and returned tap-dancing.
O, right arm, won't you tell me what you know?
My body's on fire, my body's one big coal bed
for God's enormous iron poker, but I can't see
past all the smoke. My stubborn mouth could never swallow
the embers of God's language. My pagan feet fire-walk,
my left arm makes the sign of the cross,
and the backs of my knees refuse to believe in anything
so my body becomes a war zone. Somewhere God
discos through the carnage, and all I can do is follow
when my right arm stiffens into a divining rod
and bows down.

~ Jessica Hand