Brandon Downing

Vista

                                          
Sea of batteries, glossy base cockles.
Mudslide bushes, bricks, slaps.

Calculating, mellow chai,
Dale killed off, Gonzo posed.

Tropism? Trap art?
Advice strolls back from debit,

Unappreciative,
Ottoman arches of force.
Holding onto our melted Prada stuff,
Small, draggy associations,

Their professional
Epistolary soloism.

I can fake that book too, yo.
Take me down to the Taco Bear.

As a county man, using my arms
To fly to the farms, flowers clinging to their beds,

Petals opening up into detailed camo guys,
And you brainiacs’ll have to live with it.

---

Sometimes, on My Shoulder, are Her Panties

1.
Together since they were temple kids,
Nude and obsessed with country music,

Having a great day out at Wheat Ridge,
Too bad I couldn’t escape from the well by force.

Nobody should disarm you social dudes, though:
I, too, fell for a hot Little Rascal with a rack.

She kissed me on my ears, even though they
Both look like sombreros made from old pie crust.

2.
Once the blood is draining
Outcha head though, it’s gonna
Be over pretty much, there’s
All kinds of things you coulda did.
1–2–3–5, dead. Right after
Looking at this Rancho t-shirt.

3.
The favor that I’ll ask of you now

Is a simple collage of previous favors
I’ve been previously granted by (add.xl file)

Easy, normal ones.
Get over your cat’s death!

Stop claiming to be altered and aware, to being
500 guns attached to an electrode fuse array,

Hidden in the hayloft in protruding bright
Iron racks, hoping nobody up there is a Kraut,

My empty cannoning into a junkie teen torso
Becoming a secret path to my palace, to me.

Just hot light on dark invisible art!
Not only a college with soul-sucking browned windows!


 

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Brandon Downing is a writer and visual artist originally from California. His books of poetry include The Shirt Weapon (Germ Monographs, 2002) and Dark Brandon (Faux Press, 2005), while a monograph of his literary collages from 1996-2008, Lake Antiquity, was released by Fence Books in late 2009. A long poem, AT ME, will be released as a chapbook by Octopus Books this Fall, while his next collection, Mellow Actions, will be published by Fence in 2012. In 2007 he released a feature-length collection of collaged digital shorts, Dark Brandon: Eternal Classics, with a 2nd volume forthcoming in 2011. You can see some at his link, along with his photographic and other work at www.brandondowning.org

He currently co-curates the Poetry Time at Space Space reading series in Ridgewood, New York, and lives in Astoria, Queens.