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.
