Glenn Latal

Glenn Latal Poems

There comes a moment when the membrane is pierced.
When our invulnerability leaks from us,
Silently, invisibly, from one second to the next.
Our cocoon of faith has sprung a doubt.
...

Her steam starched, water whitened, raw reddened hands
smelled of bluefish and clean pots hot and drying.
One hip cocked, unwantonly saucy,
her pen approaches pad as though taper to votive candle.
...

I have long wished to be Brahms
With girth and beard and an air of conviction,
Belonging right here, on this street, in this skin.
Old bull elephant, worn tusks, swaying trunk,
...

I
Trickling smudges against the sky,
The city is heating water to stimulate its spirit and rinse its soul.
This day has arrived wearing a dirty white overcoat
...

Throw back your head and laugh a heaven into the sky.
An aerie for the mirthful gods.
Pipe me a joyful tune and I’ll sing of hope and trust and effort rewarded.
Restock the myths, the truisms by which we live.
...

I watch the afternoon brush a coat of fresh shadow
Onto the building across the street.
It fills the view through the window of this quiet café.
The day cools and darkens around me.
...

Did they slash within the torrent, feuding still
and Noah already fathoms above them?
Was even the deluge not enough?
When the waters rise over our heads
...

Flakes flutter and glide mutely,
sopping up the overflow of sound,
coating the frictions of living in these depths.
Of what use is snow in a city?
...

It does not come.

Perhaps it will bring release,
the unbridled exuberance of casting free
...

I am wandering the swarmed aisles, perusing the tempting stacks.
Idly seeking, I come upon a volume of poetry.
Nothing leaps under my gaze, bolts into the unknown,
a white dazzle smear of tail luring pursuit.
...

I’m not here right now.
If you wish to leave a message,
I’ll see that I get it when I return.
It seems I’m doing something somewhere else.
...

The Best Poem Of Glenn Latal

Gilled Was I

There comes a moment when the membrane is pierced.
When our invulnerability leaks from us,
Silently, invisibly, from one second to the next.
Our cocoon of faith has sprung a doubt.
We’ve passed into a new world.
It’s as though the air used to be liquid,
But a new dimension has been added.
How do we now breathe a gas?

Then we remember:
The cold morning wind, that awakening, scours the soul.
One dawn, leaving the other’s apartment,
You realize you are capable of not returning.
But love is the conviction that we wouldn’t ever have to face this again.

If I try just once more, this time, it will.

I am alone on the Larchmont platform.
There are people, but they are they,
Not remotely comparable to you or me.
Yet I’ve become one, looking anywhere other than at them.
Each of us is uniquely superior.
I will refrain from implying equivalence beyond
An embarrassed tight-lipped half smile of recognition,
As long as they reciprocate.
I too, am too busy being alone.

The light bleaches the day, draining it of life and color.
The train glides me from here to there.
Through and over the world,
Encased from buffeting breeze and chilling cold.
The wind rages within, I am no longer warm blooded.
I do not lose heat to the air, but the reverse.
The only thing that ever warms is each other.

Sometimes when it fails, neither is at fault.
Without the solace of anger, we are left with only grief.
The poise that pulled us striding into the future is gone,
Stranding me between the garden and whatever purgatory is left to me.
I look out the window at this jostling entrepôt.
It is always presumptuously prepared to enfold
The prodigal back into its embrace of comfort, if not, joy.
For late spring, it’s unseasonably raw with bluster and bereavement.

This train takes me where?
Places other people are.
Things other people do.
People other people know.
I am unique, as are we all,
In the superiority of our faceless solitude.
How could we show feeling all those things
we hadn’t know were still there
and that we would have to face again?

If I try just once more, this time…

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