Anthony Hagen
—
Prosciutto and Melon
The end can’t come soon enough,
was the attitude everyone took. Maybe
suicide or maybe an end to this forever
shift. Tonight
you’ll drink a few IPAs at that chic uptown brewery,
hit the pillow buzzed and pop
generic ibuprofens after sunrise.
Somewhere in Ancient Rome
a guy takes a righteous piss
on a stone wall, paranoid about whatever
they called cops back then.
You won’t find that in a textbook.
In no textbook will you find how people felt
when the sun exploded, because that hasn’t happened yet.
The end can’t come soon enough, so let’s turn
everything into mathematics or learn to play
the tenor sax. “It’s post-impressionistic,”
said the tour guide, even though I never asked.
You ordered too many appetizers and you’re full as hell,
but that’s never stopped you before has it?
Mass of Indifferents
Recall the moment I mistook
the falling snow outside for a cloud of swarming
flies: midnight, a late March flurry
swirling in a shaft of light, until the light
darkened in the silence of early spring.
Almost wholly inward, dead
to the world like that fresh corpse
that was actually a pile of black
trash bags. Crows circling above:
a dread omen, but not really.
Nature behaves correctly but is probably
unfortunate. I tell myself,
losing you was like losing a part of my body.
I tell myself, stop being stupid. Somewhere off
a mountain highway I’m trying to decide
which soda to get, and I pick the cherry one,
and I’m living a virtuous life.
Somewhere off a Florida highway anyone can buy a dead
baby shark preserved in blue formaldehyde
or a cross made of seashells.
We exist as limbs
of the whole, not as mere pieces.
Losing you was like losing a part of my body.
I suck at an orange slice, burn a cut on my lip.
Anthony Hagen is a native of Northern Virginia and currently lives and works in Pittsburgh.
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