Glen Armstrong (he/him) holds an MFA in English from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and edits a poetry journal called Cruel Garters. His poems have appeared in Conduit, Poetry Northwest, and Another Chicago Magazine.
Hand in Hand
My hand is the sea,
and you are my favorite bather.
You are why I bother to make
such an outrageous noise and batter
at seawalls – broken pianos,
why sailors
get confused over who is reading
whose palm,
why tides tighten their grasp
and release the same.
You assure me even if my hand
were not the sea,
you would pack a picnic lunch
and bathe there.
Your hand is the sky,
and I am the unlucky bastard
with the jammed parachute,
a situation that is not your fault,
your intention, or your take on things.
I fall upwards like smoke
and sideways like greeting cards,
into the cake batter like a fly,
and into the slippery world
like Emily Dickinson.
I assure you even if your hand
were not the sky,
I would still believe in its power
to add five extra days to each year.
When We Dance
The early bird becomes
the timeless bird
when we dance.
It feels good to be uncertain.
It feels sexy.
When we text the dry cleaners
to see if our shirts are ready,
the dance has ended.
Our feet have blisters.
What I’ve said time and time
again falls on deaf ears,
which makes me realize
how void of meaning or longing
most of what I say
actually is.
The timeless bird becomes
bird bones, and I
have wasted my life wanting
to be heard rather than dancing,
worrying rather than synching
up with the music
and you.