Fall 2015, Volume 19

Poetry by Ivan Seinders

Intimacy

Intimacy is
two men in the corner
in a club at some time
in some town on some
stretch of vodka, blood, and
sex and they’re sitting there,
ear to mouth, hand to knee,
each inching toward the other,
and the sky is a ceiling,
the grass a dance floor,
but the backdrop is blurry
because the two men are
crisp and vivid and one
has a beard, the other a
blue hat leaning off his head
and a crooked smile and a
glass of water in his hand
but a breathful of vodka
from the other’s tongue
pressed against his cheek.

 

The Tire Swing

The tire swing is broken now, it got torn down
probably by an old woman with a cane and seven
grandchildren and an addiction to pain medication
because she hurt her back fifteen years ago and
when she felt the dull ache between her vertebrae,
the shouts of pain rebounding from her lungs to
her spine to her wrist, that pain reminded her
that she was already used to it. She realized she
learned her mastery in pain when she stopped
rubbing at her ring finger because it was itchy
and started rubbing at it because it was raw with
how tight she wore her wedding ring and then with
how her skin reacted to the missing elements
once she took it off forever and let you help the
flowers grow in her backyard and in the graveyard
and in the courtyards, your corpse is great
fertilizer, she’d probably say if she could, because
you were always full of it anyway.

 

 


BIO: Ivan Seinders, born in Tulsa (Oklahoma, USA), writes fiction and poetry. A student at the moment, he hopes to attend college before pursuing a career in either journalism or psychology.