Brad Liening

I Take It All Back

Every utterance

every word and person
met on the street

roommates especially
coworkers doubly
in the breakroom

the ancient fridge

humming like

the Starship Et cetera

boldly going nowhere

when the planet is

finally destroyed

the planet will be fine

we will be the ones
to suffer

just for practice
an animal crawls
into you

and dies

Hypocrisy! Alienation!

With a face like curdled milk

I stay out all night smoking and drinking

In a gas station of headache light

Full of birds with inverted crosses for eyes

And twins who crack the hard dollar

The ibex climbs onto the hood of the car

And stares down fires in the alleys

We stay out all night drinking

And smoking in a grove of poplars

We’re serious but not trying to start a forest fire

We’re serious our heads are chapped

It’s a shameful secret our sickness is inferior

Once it was no longer cool I moved

To New York

                        All my money

For first and last month’s rent

And I never once got mugged or murdered

All I Want Is Revenge

A funny smell creeps into my ears

and night stalls on a muddy rutted road.

I’ll admit it:

I’ve grown sick of my dreams.

This New Year

Ill be completely different,

I say into the mirror,

I’m turning things around! My wife

wants to know just who I think I’m talking to.

Nobody, I say,

believing every word. 

Outside my window

my neighbors glide by on cloud-like

lawnmowers, growing

handsomer under the sun.

Later they will have just one beer,

their newspapers folded and crisp.

Who knows what the news

looks like to other people.

The latest candidates order mid-level staffers

to feed low-level staffers 

to the public, 

only a small bit of which cares to eat.

The rest of us move through the fugue

of a stranger’s beige empire.

This Is Heaven, Eat Your Beans

after an art project by G. Jackson ca. 1995

I took the

long way home

to think through

the mistakes

I knew

I was making

later over beers

I asked my

friend if he
had any advice he

nodded, thinking

we finished

our beer in silence
3 days later

he calls me

up Look out

your window
he says

I go

and look

It’s night

out there, I say

it’s really

really dark

but the line

is dead

and I stand

at the window

feeling just
like a

ghost