Four Poems

Poetry by Greg Brownderville
Brother, by Lucas Kaiser. Copyright/courtesy the artist.



the sixteen chapel

if it’s one place
I want to see the sixteen chapel
michael angel made it
back when christ roam the earth
and I did dream I walk right in
it’s quiet amazing
before my every eyes
long behold I said to me
it’s god colors everywhere
sixteen heaven
and I need to find the jesus in my heart

apply inside

one day I was out in my shoes
red shop peaks my interest
sign said apply inside
so I gone in
but didn’t smell no apples
that was sad

cinema toast

been seeing faces on my cinema toast
it’s jesus and the twelve deciphers
took my toast to the sidekick
she did read my science and wonders
told me
all them toast mean jesus god and the ghost
they really cure

while I got you sidekick tell me
will I someday run the cowboys
much like jerry jomes

the sidekick cut the cards
and drew a few

drew a blue

she frowned and said so far no good
god love a crippled duckling just the same

serious about peaches

peach man at the peach stand
said son how you

I am cool stated I
how you doing peachy mister

well the real truth he said
I’m sick and tied of my wife
I want me some strange

what is strange I ask
just being plight

but all I could think about
was mugging down
on some of them elbow-drippin peaches

Greg Brownderville

Greg Brownderville has published three books of poems: A Horse with Holes in It (LSU Press, Southern Messenger Poets series, 2016); Gust (Northwestern University Press / TriQuarterly, 2011); and Deep Down in the Delta (Butler Center Books, 2012). Brownderville wrote the lyrics for a musical piece entitled Ripple the Sky, which premiered with the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Walt Disney Concert Hall in 2016. Brownderville edits the Southwest Review, the nation’s third-longest-running literary magazine, and directs the Creative Writing program at SMU.

Lucas Kaiser

Lucas Kaiser is based in Leipzig, born in 1994 in Erding Germany. He graduated from HGB Leipzig in 2023 and focuses on clichés associated with the idyll, aiming to reinvent them through formal interventions that disrupt familiarity. He works with ThisWeekendRoom in Seoul and has shown work with Galerie Kleindienst in Leipzig and Weserhalle in Berlin.