A-Minor

By Michael Keenan 

GLENCROSSE KIRKYARD

Cupcake, the beauty didn’t come
off like we thought
it would. I stay up all night,
demonstrating the lost art of knot-tying
to whoever’s blue-black light
flickers across the lake.
A minor actor in a minor role, I write
of great figures from Emanglonian art.
What is this darkness, Irena?
The Soft Police sing of terror in the apple,
I listen for trains, constantly.

A SEXUAL HISTORY OF BINGAMTON, NEW YORK

All together now,
addicts, the insane, the
misery

trapped inside some rusted frame.

June 2^nd was bad
to us all.

If I could give the golden fleece
back, I would.

If I could heal
the fountain by swimming
in an apple, you know

I would. Stranded on an Etruscan
highway, I suddenly know everything

about you. Girls
on cellphones, seem
kind.

Persephone yawns on her trellis,
On trains and off them
I don’t mind

her thinking I’m living some
kind of wreckless, beautiful life.

THE MILKY WAY

Persephone steals three crowns
in the underworld, one

of which she asks me to keep
hidden

in the abandoned mansion
by the crystal lake.

Even the devil, has gone home.

Even cliches, don’t help.

Love-sap seeps
from a fountain of escalators

In the department store
of death, when

she breaks out singing
the blues.

Michael Keenan received his MFA in Literary Arts from Brown University in 2009. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Poetry International, Fence, Paul Revere’s Horse, Arsenic Lobster, Caketrain, Leaf Garden Press, The Stolen Island Review, Ad-Hominem Art-Review, and They Are Flying Planes. He drives a waffle truck in Northern Florida.