Three Poems

by Stephen Priest

Moloch

On an avenue splashed

with a confusion of sepias and golds,

a garbage man heaves refuse

into the back of his truck

and shouts something

about his wife

above the neighborhood’s din—

he can’t love

like he’s supposed to;

maybe if he spoke

thesaurus, he says.

Sparsely, symphonically,

the compactor churns

as his partner nods

and collects more trash.

Youth In the Autumn of Late Capitalism

If whoever was in your bed

that morning came once

like a frizzle of white noise

at the end of a sonata,

then by 10 am, you’d be

at your boss’s window,

watching airplane shadows

circle the skyscrapers

like tranquilized hawks,

thinking, the more

we think the less

we want to be—

so you’d be thankful

for your job

and change the water cooler

and surf the web

and try not to bother anyone,

then head back to the window

to watch the chainsmokers

twenty stories below,

each of them

a philosopher-scientist

like you; each of them

still as a fallen claw.

Considerations

Maybe I _ _ _ _

myself?

Eh, I’d need

a Viagra first. Or:

I buy a comb

and work out

my rats’ nest,

then a hamand-

egg sandwich,

and the weather,

ooooh,

it’s haiku-ish.

BIO: Stephen Priest’s poems have been published in 32 Poems, The Agriculture Reader, Barrow Street, the Birmingham Poetry Review, Juked, Subtropics, Inlandia, the Concrete Desert Review, and other journals. These poems appear in a manuscript that’s been a runner-up, finalist, or semi-finalist for the Cleveland State Poetry Center First Book award, the Vassar Miller Prize, the Lost Horse Press Idaho Poetry Prize, the Marsh Hawk Poetry Prize, the Inlandia Hilary Gravendyk Prize, the 42 Miles Press book award, the Barry Spacks Prize, the Dynamo Verlag Book Contest, the Nervous Ghost Press Prize for Poetry, the Brick Road Poetry Book Contest, the Elixir Press Antivenom Poetry Award, the Word Works Washington Prize, the Longleaf Press Book Prize, 3 Mile Harbor Press Book Award, and the Saturnalia Books Poetry Prize.