The Divine Comedy
isn’t funny at all,
it’s a didactic treatise on the importance of Christian faith
and somewhat skeezy romantic love
but it also settles plenty of political scores
so it covers a lot of ground.
Writing it took Dante 150 years.
He wrote it all by candlelight and in English
before translating it himself (another 100 years)
into perfect Italian terza rima.
Then he was hit by a car
and died right there at the scene.
Did anyone get a look at the driver?
a cop asked but people just sipped their espresso and ignored him
because when a great poet dies
the sky opens like a jeweled music box
and birds wheel like a poem
and poetry has no use for cops.
Delicates
Some days it takes a lot of effort to keep
all the blood flowing in the right direction.
Gotta really concentrate to keep it from leaking all over the birthday party
and traumatizing the children.
A giant cake with red icing is wheeled out
from some chilly subterranean kitchen.
Is anyone hiding inside?
A lizard crawls out.
It moves among a sea of empty folding chairs.
It’s tempting to make a big deal out of this
or anything
but the world of course is very big and coolly resists us at every turn.
There are people in LA with sexy underwear.
There are people in Florida with drug problems.
There are people in New England with neither.
Berries
Darker and darker these days without season,
our lives dwindling, forced into odd shapes
but never ending.
Life must always be protected at all costs
until it doesn’t.
There is a protest like bent paperclips
tossed across scuffed linoleum
at the latest outrage perpetuated by the righteous and serene.
Berries try to break through sudden frost.
Berries try to swell in withering heat.
Threadbare, meek,
we gather up ghosts
against a tide of plastic and poisoned water. You’re rich! You’re rich!
cries a man in a suit before ascending
into the white heavens
in a helicopter painted for war.
Stacy Black is a writer from the Midwest. Recent work has appeared in Don't Submit and Scud.