By Robert Krut

DIVINITY

Virus-blind, you stumble to an alley,

under a lentil rainstorm, a preacher

waves rudder arms to thunder,

makes lightning scatter until five canaries

escape his sleeves, singing condolences,

a misdirection from the transistor radio

around his neck, beneath his vestments,

its zealous torque fusing electrodes

to your breath, turning thoughts to words,

your face a cannon, and the realization

he was merely a collection of discarded

nightclub flyers lifted by the wind

between graffitied walls.

*Originally appeared in Passages North

 

PHANTASMAGORIA AT SIX AM

In the alley between clubs, a guy shaves

in a stainless-steel plate hung to the wall.

With each sweep of the cream, his face

disappears until two eyes drift off, lost balloons.

The street is, of course, quiet.

A garbage truck glides by,

its hazards on, a cigarette lighting

the figure in the driver’s seat.

In the only market open at this hour,

you buy water and day-old bread.

The guy behind the register is unimpressed

with the character trying to sell used lottery tickets.

The daylight peels silence

off the sides of buildings, revealing

the wide-open mouth of a graffiti face,

single vampire tooth, an arrow.

Nearby, a boom box props open a window,

a blast of music startles the pigeons

that burst to the sky, unveiling

a figure standing on the street, disoriented—

waves, tips a hat,

and you are gone.

*Originally appeared in NightBlock

 

NOW, BREATHE FIRE

Wait for the ash blanket and the concrete

wall of stone when the lights go out

and all you can breathe is smoke

until you adapt and cough up flames

in the night just in time to signal a getaway car

with no plates and everyone in town looks on—

but their eyes, dead comets in their skulls,

their teeth falling out as they call to you—

but you’re already gone, gone to light

the fire that will turn this whole place

to scaffolding holding ashes, ashes, and

ashes again.

*Originally appeared in Muse/A

 

ATONAL BREATHING

Every molecule of air

communicates fear, each moth

circles the dead tree on the parkway

mourning its branches,

while we stand, trying

to breathe poison in this failing

kidney of the city,

the truck-sized foot of an invisible

giant hovering above us, knowing

that this, this simultaneous

inhale and exhale,

this shortcut to dread, this constant

constriction of the heart,

is ten times worse than

setting its body to ground

on this block where two guys

whip pennies at an old man who,

having dropped his groceries, tries

to collect the rolling-away oranges

while they laugh.

 

NEIGHBORLY GESTURES

Pollution in the hardware—

there’s no escaping,

the low hanging clouds spell

your name in wet-cotton cursive

and fill themselves

with sludge, with oil, with a mass

of slurry just waiting to release—

and here, we rush from storefront

to storefront trying to open a door

but no help arrives—in one, an old man

locks his palms to the handle

and sways back to block us out

and we are on the street open, naked,

unprepared for what is coming our way,

this pension of suffering

that is inevitable, but also so easily remedied

as that man disappears behind the blur

of his own breath, masking the glass.

*Originally appeared in The Normal School

 

YOU WILL PRAY TO WHAT WE GIVE YOU

A golden blanket covers the city,

the neon and streetlamps finally busted open,

the power gone out along Grand Avenue,

so all that’s left is the reflection

of a full moon in all that shattered glass

caught in smoke and fog like stars in gauze—

 

—and as we look above to the source,

that moon births a sun in front of our eyes

and we are blinded, with no choice

but to fall to our knees and praise the light

with all we have left, as it is all we have left.

*Originally appeared in Watershed Review

 

THE TUNING FORK AND THE LISTENERS

The reader has a condition,

tries to reconcile the tone

of words with melodies using

a tuning fork, a lovely sound

but a cheat to civilization-building

as we sing along too easily,

too ready to launch into a

chorus before deciphering the words,

no precision whatsoever, reciting

a Bible full of redactions and blurry text

in the basement while broadcasting

into a tin can tied to a tree trunk,

while your family has been locked

in a room upstairs, trying to shout,

but it is too late

as the crowd outside

rips off each other’s arms,

singing a hymn by heart,

every second person limbless,

and the ones who are not,

damned to never know

what they have done.

____________________

Robert Krut is the author of three books; most recently, his collection The Now Dark Sky, Setting Us All on Fire (Codhill Press, 2019) received the 2018 Codhill Poetry Award.  Previous books include This Is the Ocean (Bona Fide Books, 2013), recipient of the Melissa Lanitis Gregory Poetry Award, and The Spider Sermons (BlazeVox, 2009).  His work has appeared widely both in print and online, in journals like Gulf Coast, Blackbird, Passages North, and more.  He lives in Los Angeles, and teaches at the University of California, Santa Barbara in the Writing Program and College of Creative Studies.  More information can be found at www.robert-krut.com.