Excerpts from the book
By request, here are 4 poems from Dredge. You can find info on pre-ordering, cover & back cover images, and even another poem over here. Hope you enjoy half as much as I have.
Parking Lots
Surely, children have opened their mouths
here to catch fireflies.
Their mothers building the great pyre
from those few lights
that had not already murdered
one another
under tongue.
Just last night
my sister,
snaking through the great weave
of BMWs,
swore she could see Orion
in the bloody footprints
her friend had left late
that afternoon.
Longfellow Pond II
It is not enough to go back,
cast the world in our pillow-sleeves.
We yearn for our five-year-old
bodies, the bending night
and her tiny opera
of streetlights and bedroom windows.
We see children running
in strange cities and we make to grab
them by the soul
explain in a language we can no longer remember
they will beg for these moments
again, even the strange ones. Especially those.
We try demonstrating
that without the perfect camera
of a mind that would supercede ours
there is a nightly arson
in the forests of our memory, and it is criminal
how little we dredge from the shoreline.
I do not believe we emerge
from the pond of our youth
but rather that we leave the quiet of air
for the inexplicable sadness
of the water, realizing only too far from the surface
the perfect stillness of land,
that we are evolving
in reverse,
that we have left behind a sky
and forest we do not understand.
Maugus or Phillips Park II
My sister and I have always loved smashing bottles.
It’s the pop and reckless
combustion of physics in our ears
that draws us to the pavement
with arms like starter slingshots.
Glass flies remarkable
from the top of the slide.
Glass flies equipped with the first wings
the Wright Brothers dreamt of.
Glass flies like it is returning
home, terrified.
It is how we fling ourselves
small and fragile from the woodchips
into the cracks and heels
of children still smaller than us.
When an old woman,
face wrinkled as the concrete,
descends from her third floor balcony
to volley questions and condemnation
they hit with a pop louder
than fun, louder than the boom
of the first airplane’s
first engine
turning,
and settle dusty
in our ears.
Cleanup
should never be the job
of the young.
Downtown II
One day the buildings will collapse
into a mirror
but until then
we will have to satisfy our vanity
with shop windows, dressing
ourselves in reflected memorabilia and palming
the air over the rain sticks
we will fill our living rooms with
by sheer force of mind.
Our storefronts lie next to one another
like the carnival
that pounded spikes too deep.
It’s been years now and the funhouse
has eroded. We walk inside
still expecting mirrors and light.
The rear tent flaps are open,
the dogs snap manic at the wind,
we act like it’s nothing and pay
for our coffee and leave.
All of this of course © 2007 Adam Rubinstein, some rights reserved.
Parking Lots
Surely, children have opened their mouths
here to catch fireflies.
Their mothers building the great pyre
from those few lights
that had not already murdered
one another
under tongue.
Just last night
my sister,
snaking through the great weave
of BMWs,
swore she could see Orion
in the bloody footprints
her friend had left late
that afternoon.
Longfellow Pond II
It is not enough to go back,
cast the world in our pillow-sleeves.
We yearn for our five-year-old
bodies, the bending night
and her tiny opera
of streetlights and bedroom windows.
We see children running
in strange cities and we make to grab
them by the soul
explain in a language we can no longer remember
they will beg for these moments
again, even the strange ones. Especially those.
We try demonstrating
that without the perfect camera
of a mind that would supercede ours
there is a nightly arson
in the forests of our memory, and it is criminal
how little we dredge from the shoreline.
I do not believe we emerge
from the pond of our youth
but rather that we leave the quiet of air
for the inexplicable sadness
of the water, realizing only too far from the surface
the perfect stillness of land,
that we are evolving
in reverse,
that we have left behind a sky
and forest we do not understand.
Maugus or Phillips Park II
My sister and I have always loved smashing bottles.
It’s the pop and reckless
combustion of physics in our ears
that draws us to the pavement
with arms like starter slingshots.
Glass flies remarkable
from the top of the slide.
Glass flies equipped with the first wings
the Wright Brothers dreamt of.
Glass flies like it is returning
home, terrified.
It is how we fling ourselves
small and fragile from the woodchips
into the cracks and heels
of children still smaller than us.
When an old woman,
face wrinkled as the concrete,
descends from her third floor balcony
to volley questions and condemnation
they hit with a pop louder
than fun, louder than the boom
of the first airplane’s
first engine
turning,
and settle dusty
in our ears.
Cleanup
should never be the job
of the young.
Downtown II
One day the buildings will collapse
into a mirror
but until then
we will have to satisfy our vanity
with shop windows, dressing
ourselves in reflected memorabilia and palming
the air over the rain sticks
we will fill our living rooms with
by sheer force of mind.
Our storefronts lie next to one another
like the carnival
that pounded spikes too deep.
It’s been years now and the funhouse
has eroded. We walk inside
still expecting mirrors and light.
The rear tent flaps are open,
the dogs snap manic at the wind,
we act like it’s nothing and pay
for our coffee and leave.
All of this of course © 2007 Adam Rubinstein, some rights reserved.