Eratio


 

 

 

Two Poems

 

Jonathan Riccio

 

 

 

 

The Agoraphobe’s Guide to Flight

 

 

We kohl the locks, bereavement options

precluding ways I hope you mend.

 

For reasons legal and arboretum

you will list me as Anonymous,

 

more than rosacea and sailboats,

mantras like apiaries but for a battery

 

that graduated the Lyceum Duracell.

Minneapolis, I want to be your airport,

 

the postcard for turbulence that connects

scorch to frost. Hands guttural, helipad

 

dimmed to blithe. What I confide

in furloughed you, the nectar

 

is missing its drone

of most stripes.

 

 

 

 

Narrative Sodium

 

 

I don’t use it often, but lathe.

Metalworkers, pipefitter sons.

My driveway shoveler,

eighty and pension-aloof.

 

I lived in the same salt mine until 101.

Faces of my gem collection, towels

in my beauty shop.

Petals at the funeral home.

 

Honor the party glasses staying

in-family. Give them to Dena.

 

In the birdfeeder, artificial tears.

My aviary had quirks.

 

Forgo the griddle

that turned hash browns black.

Lather from a rusted can of shaving crème,

my legs centurion-bough.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jonathan Riccio is a PhD candidate at the University of Southern Mississippi’s Center for Writers where he serves as an associate editor at Mississippi Review.  His work appears in print or online at Booth, The Cincinnati Review, Hawai’i Review, Permafrost, Switchback and Waxwing, among others.  He received his MFA from the University of Arizona.  

 

 


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