Brennan Sprague
Antarctica
After I buy my pills I roam the aisles of the grocery store.
I buy Minute Maid Fruit Punch because I love the taste.
I buy cotton-scented candles because they smell so good.
In Antarctica, there are two ATM’s provided by Wells Fargo.
Every two years a vendor travels there to make sure
everything is functioning properly. He must undergo
a psychological evaluation to make sure he can handle
the climate in case he gets stuck. He could be there right now.
Not everything must matter.
The Music of Foxes
Sway the desolate beauty of sycamores. I am trying
To be present. Slow to the swiveling of the moon.
The crush of forever fluorescent. If you must, pucker
The night burning with the endless. Friday nights spent
On suburban corners spearing cigarettes between lips.
Blowing smoke into Orion’s pelvis. The rusted beaten
Down cars lurching like some death long gone, gone
As a minute, quick as the limp fox on the side
Of the road, legs wreathed around its ribcage
Like a song, orange fur crusted with crystallized
Blood, O heavenly sonata, all distorted through
American radio, holy static—all those years ago—
When driving through the backwoods at night
Seemed a divine profession, as if God perched
In the cold branches, your headlights coated
With a pall felt only by those who’ve crossed
To another paradise, those who have felt the cool
Lick of a gun against their tongue, the metallic
Whisper of nightmares, all of us lost in the murk
Of dirt & muck, perhaps even hell is more palatable
Than this glass doorknob, this slight mirror, ghosts
Gusting across stairwells in bathrobes, reliving
Their destruction over & over & over & over,
To dream of what tire skids could mean—what is
Gorgeous? What matters—because the dark
Evenings mean that God is lenient, that God
Remembers every fragile taped-up box of a soul,
Every collarbone leading to a forest, every summer
Of dusklit bicycles, 7/11 floors slick with mop water,
Employees blowing bubblegum with their infected nose
Piercings, their hair tangled with scrunchies, dreading the end
Of the hour, their return to their two bedroom apartment,
their drunk father, their medicated mother—yes,
Our lovely parents will die, a sliver of us will die too—
But I knew you then, and you know me now—isn’t that enough?
But when is enough ever enough? When it is.
When will I know when’s enough? You will.
It’ll be so bright that the ruin of us will be perfect.
Middle of Everywhere
On a dark road in the middle of everywhere
a fawn prances across its stones into the trees.
A mother loves her son and a father tries to.
A father loves his son and a mother tries to.
We are loved. My mother on the balcony,
Pacific breeze. My father behind the sliding glass.
I am the glass. Sleek and lean, easily shattered.
Tonight, the fawn finds the buck, the doe.
Tomorrow, they drop me off, and fly home.
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Brennan Sprague is a poet residing in Rochester, NY. He loves dream pop, golden retrievers & Baja Blasts. His work appears in The Adroit Journal, Barren Magazine and The Shore, among others, with work forthcoming in Westwind.