Two Poems

by James Ekenstedt

Artwork: Richey, CynthiaYatchman

Relapsing into Space

It’s a blast of yellow,
the opiates fade while my eyes curtain close
off on another pilot speaking,
another “prepare for landing.” I’ve spent sixteen
years crawling this line,
balancing is just stalling with style.

Bold, bitter, balloons, and glitter –
floating hands, karaoke, and ten different
ways to be a sinner
bottled into one dusk, witness
one whiff of joy streak through snaked clouds.
Aren’t we all desperate in our own cabin-pressured ways?

Last night was not a movie.
It’s a graded, faded rerun I’ve lived before.
Her head on my shoulder was a tease of
a life pure.
Or was it the K, the gas, the burn?

Tonight will find me, and tomorrow too.
The cabin crew and somewhere hidden there
I am too
with tightrope balance and roped-in tight ambition,
floating just above consequence.

---

Good Son

Let’s lean linear, yes?

One:
Start with belief.
Fishes, crosses,
the clean weight of righteous me.

Two:
Shatter that glass plate.
Make me tap dance
till the blood shards kiss heel,
forge a breaking shoe.
Cinderella, I guess,
was born of the jig.

Three:
Deny, defy, get high,
drop him cold
with a clean right.

Four:
Note gray pubic hair
as you hoist him
over the toilet.

Good Son showed up
to dance on time.