Words and photograph by: Michael Vagnetti
Michael Vagnetti’s poetry tunes the reader’s ear and flexes the reader’s eye with rhythms and imagery that demand a steady attention to the chaotic world that it enacts, critiques, and collapses into. His work is “another instructive sculpture” that engages “the grace you were foraging for.”
GREAT TASTE IN SCRIPTS
the revelation is in the clutter.
when plastic gets caught in the zipper,
it’s another instructive sculpture,
like a piano contains the foundation
for writing jingles. some singers
describe things trapped in other things,
like appendices or unwanted creatures,
and after the story’s done they cooperate
with what’s cleaned up and funny,
but punctured, healed, bruised again,
punished like the nonviolent banana
slipped on and peeled repeatedly into oblivion.
of all the nothing I should say to you,
I do pretty much say everything.
MUSKET MOLD
a composite of leaks from the future
dangles like wisdom
a trap propped over a sieve
a silica gel of feeling
the grace you were foraging for
with rubber bullets
the nodder in the corner
staining the concrete like structure
there is another who wants to sit there
so I’ll leave the runway open
if it comes in wisps and dribbles
or with a freight of flankers
that aren’t supposed to be a part of us
but are: push play and record it
who ever actually heard
a worn-out tape
or saw an owl turn
its head around like a volume knob
Michael Vagnetti is a writer and photographer whose poetry and criticism has appeared or is forthcoming in Prelude, Chain, The Rumpus, and Blackbox Manifold. A native of metro Detroit, he lives in Brooklyn.
