WHITE SONNET

One dreams
while the other
resembles a lost freight train’s
elephant call.

They both have wings
as witnessed
by broken eggshells and coffee grounds
mulched into the clay garden.

A lusty breeze’s bulging mouth
sneaks its young
through a barbed wire fence.

Releases them
on the opposite side
of the universe.

- Alan Britt

(featured in the poetry forum 03.12.11)

SEPTEMBER DUSK

A hawk’s cinnamon wings slice the air
just above a muscular waist of oak leaves.

Cuts a clean, fresh swath.

The scar, oblong, half-circled,
and stitched by white ashes,
falls from a jade silence.

- Alan Britt

(added 03.12.11)

THE NIGHT CYNTHIA DEBARTOLO STOLE A GIANT
INFLATED SINCLAIR GAS STATION DINOSAUR

First the inflated Sinclair gas-station dinosaur
came down
stuffed comfortably into the back seat
of your Plymouth convertible.

Then the routine Ft. Pierce patrol car
idled up beside your
morning-glory-blue eyes
with their canary specks
flickering off the Atlantic.

What’d you hope to gain
by absconding with that dinosaur?

Or perhaps it wasn’t the dinosaur after all,
so much as your heavy kisses
two months later
clouding my ’57 Chevy’s back windows
like steam billowing from large pots
of boiling potatoes.

- Alan Britt

(featured in the poetry forum 11.16.10)

CHILDHOOD
(For Rusty McClain)

Hanging in the closets
of childhood
were secrets
followed by
embarrassments,
and small hand guns,
bluejays
of injustice
cocked
against cool darkness.

And just below the sweatshirt
not worn
in weeks,
slept
the pearl-handled
egalitarian life
you were promised.

As anxiety
carved your
adolescent
grief,
each dawn
you arose
an outcast Phoenix
from the ashes
of your dreams.

- Alan Britt

(featured in the poetry forum 09.18.10)

NIGHT SOUNDS

Maple leaves tap rain gutters.

A tractor-trailer
pants
in a diner parking lot.

A tomcat removes
his bloody bandage.

A robin abruptly chirps and whistles
in the middle
of a carnal dream.

Eighteen seconds later
a train honks.

Crickets
form a revolutionary congress
below forsythia,
faded shingles,
and a 1920’s streetlamp
leaning against a sulfur breeze
whose kisses of fireflies
have only hours
to survive.

Miles away the chemical train
moans like a cow.

- Alan Britt

(featured in the poetry forum 07.07.10)