Two Poems by Ted Powers
Our new poetry editor, Wendy Xu, has selected two poems by Ted Powers for her monthly series that brings original poetry to the screens of Hyperallergic readers.
Physical Thoughts
Through pockets of air
they break open seams
and I’m in training
to get older. What
the world is
is what you are capable of
before you decide against it.
Meaning is a painful bearing down
in the seeds of a moment.
Small indelicacies prune the past.
I do a mystery to me,
an ax I drop on words.
I was going to say something.
I haven’t said anything in a while.
Like Devin in the Movies
Henry broke up with you and a weird-shaped hole opened in your free time.
We ate popcorn in front of a movie about a boy who was also a wolf
and everyone knew it but him. I wrestled you into basements of logic.
You kept getting loose. The bloated corpse of government shook
around a couple of laws. I sat down and worked on my screenplay
about a couple pitted against nature and nature is played by a bear.
Non-Henry kept hanging around, mucking things up, dragging
mud beyond the mud in our lives. I started a script about a woman
who couldn’t get out of space then it was over. We watched a movie
with the same plot as the wolf-kid movie except this time it was a squid
who was also a wolf, and everyone knew it but him. The seasons
kept churning out their small irregular surprises. None of them
pertained to us. We drove by a sign that read ‘End School Zone’,
zone crossed out with graffiti. You blamed Non-Henry.
* * *
Ted Powers is a poet and collage artist living in Massachusetts. He is the author of the chapbook Please Light Up (Slope Editions, 2015). His first full-length collection, Manners, is forthcoming from Mount Analogue. His collages can be seen here.
Readers are encouraged to submit 3–5 poems as a PDF to Wendy Xu for consideration at poetry@hyperallergic.com.
