Alan Britt poems have appeared in Agni Review, American Poetry Review, The Bitter Oleander, Cottonwood, Kansas Quarterly, Midwest Review, Minnesota Review, Missouri Review, New Letters, Osiris, andStand (UK). His latest books are Garden of Earthly Delights and The Tavern of Lost Souls, from UnCollected Press and Červená Barva Press respectively. A graduate of the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University he currently teaches English/Creative Writing at Towson University.
US & THEM
Thank god for mulligans;
some would say, heaven sent.
But the memes floating around
like spaceships
& sometimes like a heavenly ray
of dawn with quantum flecks
of our lives broadcast all
over the place—one could enter
these timeless atoms being transported
to another dimension
including the one where some of us
have a bad reputation.
Anyway, thought you might want
to hear that before you
make your next move.
THE STAIN
We are nothing more than a gray stain on a worn sidewalk.
Stain that began dark as thunder but over the years became Rorschach from a tropical storm.
The sidewalk also contains pink gum turned into tar, plus political jesters ground into dust.
If I had a ladle, I’d lift the shadows from that sidewalk like they were crawdads escaping
a cast iron Nola pot.
But I wasn’t born with a ladle, & I wouldn’t boil another lifeform while it was still alive
as long as I’m a member, such as that is, of the human race on this blue gyroscope called
by its terrestrial name.
Oh yes, the stain.
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