by: Ian Brand
Ian Brand’s poetry unfolds in dream-space of surreal collision, where our universal longing for time and connection become an ocean of “unhousable wants” as we sit in the “lap of the now,” looking out at ourselves as if from a great distance…
THE NIGHTWATCHMAN
was so lonely
he befriended all the mannequins in the department store,
rubbed their mute planetoid skulls,
stared into their blank ungendered faces
until he too became hollowed
by his unhouseable wants. Inside
their torsos he heard the curling of an ocean,
the amassing navies
of the moon– the plash of the rowers’ oars
across a distance made incalculable
by his longing.
THERE’S AN EMERGENCY HOLE IN THE ROOF
Like a freak migration of moths, snow swarms our englassed privacies…
fills the empty
car lot
where Euclidean space grows hirsute with its own negation–
a lunar canvas
never before
so blank of possibility.
Meanwhile, the past has shrunk
to a mere ornament, a crucifix
returning a thousand tomorrows as rain.
I think there’s an emergency hole in the roof
of nostalgia
where this plaster just keeps falling and falling
into the lap of now.
Ian Brand’s poems of mine have appeared in numerous publications including, THE MANHATTAN REVIEW, American LETTERS AND COMMENTARY, Third Coast, and POET LORE. Ian has also written two chapbooks, “ A Brief Bio of the Stick Figure” ( Pudding House 2007) and “The Ransacked Planetarium” ( Pudding House 2009) – both nominated for a Pushcart Prize.
