Poem: Still

Still

By Patrick T. Reardon

 

In Burger King, the Filipino

singer is louder than the

gold sparrows of Deuteronomy,

Texas, as proud as the

bearded eagles (technically

hawks) of Suwanee River, a

Bubbly Creek songbird,

encased, for whim, in

a garden apartment next

to the Avenue O el sis-boom-

bah-ing the midnight moon

over four young innocents

on a car hood under the

Arch at the Mississippi bank,

old man hour, bare toll,

current ripples the running

of a two-year-old, tired from

pushing the wagon up an

incline to the church door

and the inner cool and the

glass stained with mysteries,

glorious, sorrowful and mundane.

 

Still point triangle.

 

The green-brick apartment

building is a massive idol,

settling its butt comfortably

into the vacant lot soil, as it

was written in this or that

testament, the reading of

early afternoons in winter

sun, as silver and sharp as a

switchblade, snap open, snap

shut, the red door is always

there, going from here to

there, carrying what you

have to, or sitting down

like a tantrumer in the

toy store aisle, like the

sitting-in-judgment, like

the sitting pontiff of a

small religion, like absent

enemies, like plows left in

naked fields, so many

misremembered irritations.

 

Still point triangle.

 

From the pulpit, read the

prophet’s words into the

purple light of wonder, read

out the vision of lost hobos,

empty mystics, the blank

white, three temptations,

three persons on one bike,

three blocks north and one

block west, the back stiff,

the child new, the footsore

mile, and the only clarity

a long parking lot, gray

wildness, and the spatula-

handle doors into Burger

King and the bare song of

a Filipino guitarist.

 

Patrick T. Reardon

3.10.26

 

 

 

This poem originally appeared in Ginosko Literary Journal 33 on 3.26.25.