Five Poems
JOB SECURITY
Wake at dawn soak feet
in dew on grass
under apple tree
of perfect May morning
Recall brown whip
of snake seen yesterday
disappearing under fieldstone
and two deer nipping hosta
blossoms caught in last
night’s headlights
Stand outside and bend
with the wind, asking
when was the last time
a poet got fired from poetry?
A PANCAKE YOU’LL FLIP OVER
Facts of life
and death remain
the same. We live
and die, we love and
grieve, we breed
and disappear.
And between these
existential
gravities
we fall for
meaning, build on
memory, leave a record
for those who will
forget us.
BY AGREEMENT
Shoot me in the Serengeti
if you catch me using
words like “iconic”
“iteration”
“trope” & “existential”
—or gawd forbid—
“unprecedented”
I’ll die on the spot
and be consumed by
hyenas, I swear, if you ever hear me say
anything as pervasive
& deadly as
“thank you so much”
THE PROBLEM
The problem
with thinking
you’re
always
right
is that
it requires
a kind of
tunnel
vision
guaranteed
to ruin
the
view.
WHO WERE THEY?
I know it was a dream
but it upset me to see
on the other side
of a window a trio
of faces in the dark,
migrants quietly waiting
to be noticed and fed. Then
this morning, a centipede
scrabbling without purchase,
trying to climb out of the
kitchen sink, I urged into
a teacup, then walked it out
onto the lawn and let the
miraculous creature be.
Geoffrey Young
Born in 1944, Geoffrey Young grew up in San Diego. After a Fulbright year in Paris, he worked at La Galerie Sonnabend for a spell. In 1982 he moved from Berkeley to Great Barrington, Massachusetts. Over a thirty-year period, his small press, The Figures, published more than 135 books of poetry, art writing, and fiction. Recent books of his poetry and drawing include Pivot (2020), and Asides (2020). The trilogy: Alibi (2019), Sauce (2018), and Sight Unseen (2018) exist in small editions. For twenty-seven years he directed the Geoffrey Young Gallery, which closed as of Christmas, 2018. Over the years Young has written catalog essays for more than a dozen artists.
Alex Griffin
Alex Griffin lives and works in East Falls, Philadelphia. Griffin’s work has appeared in solo and group exhibitions throughout the United States. From 2017 until 2019, he was associated with The Professional Artist Membership Program at the Mainline Art Center. Today, Griffin’s paintings are included in private collections across the country and abroad. Griffin received his B.F.A. from Virginia Commonwealth University in Painting and Printmaking in 2008.