Sunday, November 29, 2020

New Poetry by Carson Pytell










Seeing

Crepuscular, prodding the boulevard; beeps and bumping,
the billowings of craft burps and vapor, a cigarette handy
and a thin old flask but a day long. I think it's not so bad.

They still do talk, from under and above twilit canopies
I hear cackling, coughs, expatiation of poor paraphrases
as if it's something new to do and find it uneasy to frown.

I can almost smell the sugary throats of them now, 
touting everything under the sun then everything beyond it;
all the stars, maybe water, themselves when they say it aloud.

I feel them there as wind knows other winds
which hit and halt then stir about storms, then pause
and settle into the quiet steam off coffee cups.

And it's that time, out for constitutional cacophony.
Most everyone needs coffee now, even if what's more
appealing is more homebrewed talk, less inhaling thought.

Which is bothersome. I find in these polyphonies seeming
to be the only one listening enough to be just in saying
no one seems to be listening enough to say anything justly.

People need that coffee, need to wake up a little,
if only long enough to get on home and into bed 
long enough to wake up thinking not but what they said.

So somewhere I sit, perhaps a bench, furtively gulp 
and light my cigarette because it's gone out of style
and - knowing no other style - wait, wait for the steam talk.

Being blind, you forget other people still can see you
and your tears. Myself, people, ideas, we come and go.
I think it's not so bad, but that's all I can do.


- © Carson Pytell 2020


Carson Pytell is a writer living outside Albany, NY whose work has appeared in numerous venues online and in print, including Artifact Nouveau, The Virginia Normal, NoD Magazine, Rabid Oak and Bluepepper, among others. He serves on the editorial board of the journal Coastal Shelf, and his short collection, First-Year (Alien Buddha Press, 2020) and chapbook, Trail (Guerrilla Genesis Press, 2020) are now available. In December 2020 he is slated to participate in the Tupelo Press 30/30 Project.


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