rollercoasters are
my favorite form of
transportation
what is bribery
in poetry going
to prove?
pluck me out
of my gown
throw me
against your song
I claim a hundred feet of
air above
my head
a murmur of sparrows
flies in flies out keeping
me nauseous with love
making use
of tiny instruments
needing their
music absorbed
HOW DARE
the mayor of
Philadelphia refuse
our collective joy of
rollercoasters
over buses
tally your
math again
I love being a
statistic involving
spun sugar on a stick
and instability
counted upwards
of a thousand
drops of saliva
we can read
ANYTHING
go out and read
the engine’s cold
throttle left over
night in one
position
love came
breathing
against me I did not
mind the captivity
elevating these
harmed avionics
of the brain
climbING the track
ROARing downhill
reborn through the S-curve
the extortion of poetry
an opera mounting
the bed sheets we
won’t stop it when
we know we must
my critical review of
your little daisy staring
staring staring staring
STARING until it grows
The son of white trash asphyxiation, CAConrad’s childhood included selling cut flowers along the highway for his mother and helping her shoplift. He is the author of A BEAUTIFUL MARSUPIAL AFTERNOON: New (Soma)tics (Wave Books, 2012), The Book of Frank (Wave Books, 2010), Advanced Elvis Course (Soft Skull Press, 2009), Deviant Propulsion (Soft Skull Press, 2006), and a collaboration with poet Frank Sherlock titled The City Real & Imagined (Factory School, 2010). He is a 2011 Pew Fellow, and a 2012 Ucross Fellow. He is the editor of the online video poetry journals JUPITER 88 and Paranormal Poetics. Visit him at http://CAConrad.blogspot.com.