New Poetry by Brian Glaser

Anti Canto 

1. 

What is to be done 

for the homeless mentally ill in our nation? 

My opening thought 

is the Loaves and Fishes Saturday lunch 

served by my family parish 

when I was in high school. 

My father and I went to help on weekends for about a year. 

My work was mostly cutting vegetables, 

and I was unselfconscious talking with the men we fed— 

I brought one whom I had befriended 

a pack of cigarettes. 

There was one man in the kitchen with a nervous disorder 

whose hand flapped uncontrolled at his side. 

He looked at me with ingenuous eyes, 

a wounded smile,— 

nobody came with him or left with him; 

that was thirty years ago— 

but if I need a symbol of my conscience  

with respect to this question, 

I look back at him lovingly  

until he breaks off the gaze. 

2. 

It’s a complex problem. 

I don’t think we will solve it wholly by housing 

one suffering person at a time. 

But it might help 

to decide we know other ways  

the problem will not be solved— 

like appealing to bootstraps and hard work, 

individual will and enterprise— 

pound a stake back in the heart of  

that stalking vampire capitalism 

who denies there are problems 

he cannot solve. 

3. 

What makes a home? 

I think of the runner stealing down the third base line 

out of the frame 

in a clip of a college baseball game 

I saw yesterday on my phone— 

the pitcher is set, staring gravely and tensely at the ground, 

preparing his mind to pitch, 

and suddenly the catcher leaps up, urging him to throw home 

but by the time the runner slides in headfirst 

and wins the game 

the pitcher still has not begun to throw the ball. 

And the camera follows the celebration of the whole team 

jumping and surrounding the runner, 

some of them right in the center of the group 

and a few on the periphery, 

bouncing gamely, 

back up the third base line, 

and that’s where the story ends, 

in medias res, 

like every other story. 

- © Brian Glaser 2022

Brian Glaser is the author of four books of poems and many essays on poetry and poetics. He teaches art and history at Chapman University in Orange, California.