Tuesday poem #304 : Seth Landman : 3:33:33

I get antsy when the free time comes

I think where should I go

I go to Maine alone and think

I am alone

by the sea

don’t bring the sea into it

the house ummmmm the mind

alone on the drive

I am in the darkness

an owl is sitting in the middle

of the road staring at me

I really freak out

a thing with wings sitting down

the steering wheel steers

I steer using the wheel

its purpose

all these forces pushing me back

to equilibrium

I have this feeling

I’m not supposed to have

I call my doctor in September

but they’re scheduling out through the winter

I email my doctor

I reach out to the medical field

I go through this phase where I’m like

okay I’m going to return every email right away

when there’s something to do

I’m gonna just do it

I look up a problem on the internet

I calm myself down with statistics

and then get struck by lightning

suddenly my phone

starts defaulting to a screen to do with

barometric pressure

suddenly there is a storm

and I think what is conjuring what

if you want to be a poet

you have to be a poet

a sort of anxious half-assed toxic mindfulness

you have to sit there and let ridiculous

language confound you

and say you are articulating

the whole in ragged impossibility

for the sake of the part

that needs you

when I was a kid

this one part

of my hair would always stick up

now nothing grows there

no hair finds purchase

what about seeds

what about that really

cool wool cap

I had when I was 18

and that later I saw in a photograph of me

with a friend sitting on my lap

such  unconscious closeness permitted

certain times in your life

otherwise what you can gather from experience

nails drilled into fossils

scraping across endless slate

how it feels to be like

what should I do now

and go ahead with regret

when I was 20 I drove to California

I had never been west of Albany

it was hard to say goodbye to my mom

who was with me driving

when I got to California I was already

nostalgic about California

my mom flew home

I still can’t explain that feeling

my hair was already thinning

somewhere a pine tree was already waiting ominously for me

a smoking planet somewhere

in another solar system

with a star at the center

spitting out Hydrogen Helium Lithium

Beryllium Boron Carbon

Nitrogen Oxygen

Fluorine Neon Sodium Magnesium

Aluminum Silicon etc. everything so abundant

in the crust of the Earth

I look at my clock

it is 3:33 I look at my phone

why do we call it a feed

why do you show up in there

Seth Landman is the author of the full-length poetry collections Confidence (Brooklyn Arts Press, 2015) and Sign You Were Mistaken (Factory Hollow Press, 2013). His work can be found in Boston Review, iO, Jellyfish, Lit, and elsewhere. He received his PhD in Creative Writing and Literature from the University of Denver (2013) and an MFA from the University of Massachusetts (2008). He is an English teacher and boys’ basketball coach at The Putney School in Vermont.

The Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan

Tuesday poem #303 : Rebecca Rustin : Psych Ward Bingo

Over questioning blue eyes

Marilyn's hair's an orange tornado.

Like any product of an environment

I believe in nature versus nurture.

The craziest I ever acted 

was during my six weeks in psych.

My psych ward bingo card 

squares would say -- wait -- 

Maybe I should grid this 

in terms of good and neutral

Chaotic and evil crazy:

good crazy is letting a tiny

Mother into my bed to bring her

off with my finger and wake up

Together under the dark gaze

of that day's orderly.

Neutral crazy is spitting out 

my pills; their too-low dose

Of MDMA is evil crazy.

Chaotic crazy is running

Corner to corner barefoot

on polished vinyl floor.

Lawful crazy is my dad looking

in through bulletproof glass.

Marilyn has smoking privileges.

There's an ex-psychiatrist

Strapped 

to his bed.

Rebecca Rustin is a freelance copywriter and translator in Montreal, Quebec, with poems in Pioneertown, PRISM, Train and talking about strawberries all of the time.

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan

Tuesday poem #302 : Noah Falck : NOTHING’S LULLABY

It is immersed in the whole blackened wildness of night. A revision swallowed in the cinema of hurt. A sound we know only by stepping through. Like fire scribbling through a cemetery. We run through it as if a season or a cartoon, our nervous systems exposed. In one of the scenes you can see our little orange hearts booming. Tiny flares always about to go out. We stay awake as a way to punish our sketched-out bodies.

Noah Falck is the author of Snowmen Losing Weight (BatCat Press), and EXCLUSIONS (forthcoming from Tupelo Press, 2020). He lives and works in Buffalo, New York. Find him @nofalck

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan