New Poetry by Christine Brandel

CINEMATIC

 

O you silly little, just a boy, she can pick you

up and move you across the floor -- there's a mark

there, did you hit it when he pretended to hit you,

like someone once did not pretend to hit her?

You act like you are clever, but she is the one

who solved that puzzle. You act like you love,

but her heart is bound with twine. You act this way,

that way, because you are an actor. She is not. She lives.

She speaks on telephones. She hits glass and it breaks.

She writes. She beats metaphors like corpses until they

no longer breathe, and her poems end like suicides.

- Christine Brandel 2014

WE ARE ALL BIG BOYS NOW

 

On Monkey Island, the mothers groom their young. When grown,

monkeys tend to each other: they clean and scratch and stroke

to maintain good hygiene and to form a bond. Social grooming

releases a chemical that relaxes the monkeys. It's scientific,

you can look it up if you don't believe me.

 

         It is not her job to keep you clean. It is not her job to pick

         the dirt and scales you let cover you. It is not her job

         to keep you protected from parasites and regret.

 

When grown, monkeys tend to each other.

 

         We are all big boys now.

 

- Christine Brandel 2014

Christine Brandel is a British-American writer and photographer. In 2013, she published her first collection, Tell This To Girls: The Panic Annie Poems, which the IndieReader described as a "well-crafted, heartbreakingly vivid set of poems, well worth a read by anyone whose heart can bear it." To balance that, she also writes a column on comedy for PopMatters and rants and raves through her character Agatha Whitt-Wellington (Miss) at Everyone Needs An Algonquin. More of her work can be found at clbwrites.com.