*Featured image courtesy of Pexels on Pixabay*
Glen Armstrong has a unique voice and style that leads to some magical lines in his poetry. Check out his four poems down below.
Antonyms for “Blue Grass”
Has the violin been over-repaired?
It doesn’t sound
hillbilly enough.
And what about my singing voice?
There are worse ways to earn a dollar.
I holler
at my sweetheart the way I holler
at an animal
that it’s time to eat.
Rich folk leave the Met pretending
their feet do not exist,
pretending that a God
they don’t believe in has chosen them
with a magnet
tied to a string
tied to a bamboo fishing pole.
We invite them to pull up a chair,
but they are statues
broken from their bases.
We offer them bread,
but their bellies are solid
gold brass.
Antonyms for “Now”
The new system is a continuation
of the old,
but even fewer of us recognize
specific birdsongs
at sunrise
or know the names of melodies
written before we were born.
History is no longer taught.
The therapist accuses me
of being hung up on the past.
The new-age guru wants me
to live in the moment.
I am dating a Russian spy.
The new espionage
is a continuation of the old.
The new music,
the new prostitution, the new foreword
to the book that isn’t
a book so much as flickering
flame near a body of water
that I can escape to . . .
it all continues.
Antonyms for “Old Hat”
A swarm of bees pauses
at the window
as a pianist and his dance band
take the tiny stage
wearing pyramids for hats.
Their song starts like an egg,
breaking open and explores
its surroundings in a manner
equal parts majestic and naive.
The swarm of bees
wants to buy me a drink.
My drink pauses in its glass
waiting for rain,
waiting for ice to melt.
This world has been too intense
as of late.
Too many pale riders on out-
of-focus white horses
know my drink’s reputation
for renewal and melancholy.
Antonyms for “Prom Date”
She regretted what she said
and wore
even as she said and wore it.
She wished the English
language would catch
on a poorly hammered nail
and tear itself open trying
to escape,
reveal itself all at once,
expose itself equally
to those who would mock
and those standing silent
with conceptual empathy.
She had misrepresented herself
to these people who put too much
faith in carpenters,
who moved their bodies
a million different ways
without ever achieving dance.
Glen Armstrong (he/him) holds an MFA in English from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and edits a poetry journal called Cruel Garters. His poems have appeared in Conduit, Poetry Northwest, and Another Chicago Magazine.
