This is Not a Poem about the Fast and Furious Franchise, Even When It Is & Others
I.
CGI Lazarus in the driver’s seat how we weep
you think the magic of the Pleiades is
God speaking but actually
it’s a very fast car
an explosion buildings crumbling
isn’t that how the universe began
I won’t pretend to know how it ends
except in the resurrection of
men with very good teeth
their headshots unsplintered
their young girlfriends memorialized
alternate universe of tulips
that hang like umbrellas
II.
the fever that feeds the girls must also be the one that wakes them
please don’t call them girls he is calling them
girls again the fever that feeds the girls
is a type of lust but it is not the only lust
couldn’t you think instead on
nice things like women who stayed even as men
have betrayed and fled to their nets the women who
never faltered
may you wash their feet
may you dry them with hair
however low your head must go
so let it
Olivia Benson
Cool cop I love you / mythic, a sainted nun in a cellar / a burnt down house brittle on the lips of a politician / I’m alive at dawn and grateful / I’m collared and treated gingerly and grateful / I toast my bread but suffer for it / and must I now lay my head across cool tile floor / and must I now stoke this fever and be dragged over my own coals / here in the flickering box that media built / here we are intermediaries with plummy bruised lips / and cool cop give me the icebox to curl into / and our jaw is a mountain range scalable as a defense / but you, too, are softer than this / you trim my nails when I cannot even read my own palm / you give me grace / you give me calm
Dessert Jesus
Dolce Jesus: blue eyed and pale.
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Receding hairline Jesus: profile of a soft rock legend.
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Jesus of ribs and thigh gap:
Jesus bloodied and ill.
(Jesus of vinegar and gall.)
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Jesus my cannolo, my limoncello.
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Jesus, a postcard of the fresco covered in scaffolding:
Jesus Christ! The towers are narrow,
yet up I go to ring the bells.
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Jesus sweet Jesus, I take a second gelato:
I kiss it, I eat, I forget to pay.
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Jesus, I’m a blockbuster in the Mediterranean sun:
I’m the thief in the casino/
I’m golden-eyed like a cat/
I’m lounging on the rocks by the sea
Miranda Dennis‘s essays have been published in Granta, Witness Magazine, and Birdcoat Quarterly, with a short story in Allium. Her poetry has appeared in storySouth, the Hollins Critic, Meridian, Cold Mountain Review, and others, with poetry reviews in the Hollins Critic, Quail Bell Magazine, and Luna Luna Magazine. She is the author of the micro-chapbook The Margaret (Whittle Micro-Press) and the chapbook All the Vessels (Bottlecap Press). Miranda studied at Hollins University and the MFA Program for Poets and Writers at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, and currently resides in Brooklyn.
The Marbled Sigh 