Dennis Hinrichsen​
​

[mosaic] [WITH GATSBY AND THE SOUR DEAD]

                               wind all night last night—a low fire
zombie substrate—like in the Arctic
               now--

those nightmare scenes I keep repeating
               freshly fanged--
                              brain nearly

               digital these days--
                              even at rest
it scrolls—brain
​
                              still with its doors not blown out--
that’s my friend--
               all his framing’s splintered--

wind has pushed him to cliff edge
               in just four months--
                              he is slack--

               windless—a jib--
                              really gibbet—hanging
between nurse and partner

                              to take a piss--
he forgets his daughter’s name
               but not her face--

wakes from napping—looks for me--
               but it’s just
                              Death there--

               ​not low and delicious
                              as Whitman had it--
but vulgar mostly—lyric--

                              how could it not be otherwise--
that’s how we spoke--
               walking Crane Beach

or that Gatsby lawn fronting the estate--
               desiring
                              not money

               but its hidden healing power--
                              loving daughters--
world as fuel as friendship is--

                              as bodies are--
father—brother—husband—wife--
               all the sour dead

keening as we the living burn--
               seeing only the grief
                              in it--

               where is the joy--
                              the promised new life--
there’s a gap in theory

                              somewhere--
Dear godrot--Dear thing-in-the-night that pierces
               the brain--

how is it you so easily cut away
               at us
                              ​we mistake you for the shapes of care
[dominion] [WITH JOHN KEATS AND A NAPKIN]

sometimes I am so eternal I am Keats’ nightingale
               lip-synching

my own private trauma—that age-old human-
                              woe-

porn—magnificent and temporal in the singing--
               but I’ll be

done soon—being mortal—nearing 70—I can’t
                              carry him

anymore—he can groan away in that other world--
               literature—his

royalties crypto (by the line—like Poetry does)--
                              so he

can reap the love and fame many these days are
               reaping—lesser

talents sure—but we’ve evolved—the computations
                              shift—it renders

down to voice the constant X—the criminal
               (eternal)

(see above) vagaries of a era—the real trauma-
                              porn--

necessary—given diminishment (constant)—naked
               murder--

how we manifest what we define as love—the way
                              some men now

would kill a nightingale if they could—failing that
               they turn to

women—who are songbirds sometimes—eaten
                              behind a napkin--

by the beak—sometimes—it is happening now--
               on full display

—O John Keats your poem is ruins—bust with
                              its nose

blown off—stumps for arms—not quite that
               next

museum—heaven—if you believe such things--
                              but the di-

alectic is the same—new bird with new
               song in the

trees mornings and a praying mantis in
                              the yard—I

oscillate between the two—song in my ear--
               forlorn—yes--

then memory of song—and then the man-
                              tis--
​
its trip-wire quickness—in a spray of flowers
--
Dennis Hinrichsen’s most recent work is Flesh-plastique from Green Linden Press, published March 2023. He has new work appearing or forthcoming in diode, The Glacier, Leon Literary Review, The Pedestal and Timber. He lives in Lansing, Michigan.