Selected by Bunkong Tuon, Poetry Editor

Andrew Cox: Three Poems

VERSE

 
Let’s skip the bridge. There’s no need to crossover to anywhere. Verse piles on verse until we have our own K9. Each peak covers the necessary territory and towers over the chorus as it climbs the north face. The next mountain is called family. Chaos brings rain to the valley. Umbrellas bloom into the saddest blossoms. Everyone wonders when the weather will stop attacking their worn-out way home. Big sky pushes itself though the outside in. The next mountain’s name tag says consequences are your best friend. The 60s station wagons become the only refuge from the rain of 40 days and 40 nights. Up on K9 the chorus looks down and wonders if courage is enough to descend. Making its way to the valley the echo says what will you do next.

*

TIMBRE

 
Let’s say news arrived that a friend punted his heart so high it did not come down. Let’s say the massive heart attack went off his foot as if it were shot from a pistol inside his chest. The timbre in this is all spectral envelopes. Let’s say the frequencies and their power distribution were enough to wrap a cocoon around the memory of a friend’s face. Though they play the same D minor, the sentences in this try to leapfrog one another. Let’s say the time envelope with its rise duration and decay make it clear a friend is dead. The range between the tonal and the noise hints at a timbre willing to take accountability for the arriving news. Let’s say even if it could the timbre cannot say why after the news nothing sounded the same though it was the same note.

*

REVERB

 
I have used reverb to make this poem sound like it is in a cathedral. And in that cathedral my father plays the pipe organ though he did not play pipe organ. He is singing though he did not sing much. The hymn he sings enters my blue eyes and goes out my ears though he never went out my ears. There are no followers in the church though I do not remember him performing only for me. When he finishes the way he looks at me seeps into my chest though he never entered me that way before. The silence bounces off the surface at varying speeds and creates a halo around my father though a mixed metaphor was never one of his talents.

***

False Compare by Andrew Cox
False Compare by Andrew Cox

Download False Compare by Andrew Cox

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