Car and Lizard

I find a car
and a giant lizard

no one knows
what I’m talking about

but to me
it could not be clearer

a car allows
me to be both the delivery

man and the package
I arrive

I wreck the city
I find

being male
increasingly problematic

sometimes I want
to wear eyeliner and carefully

align the paper doll’s
dress with her chubby

two-dimensional body
as for the giant

lizard
it is just a giant lizard.

Good Neighbour #94

Expect childish words from children and broken words from broken people. Only the lonely hope to hear from the small, the discontent. Expect nothing. The guest speaker favours keyholes and tiny spoons of breath-cooled soup.

I expect the impossible.

What does not exist never / continuously disappoints. It comes from the sky like lightning or a slash mark or the new fall / fall fashions. The guest speaker used the phrase “cash cow” so offhandedly that, for a moment, the audience imagined itself collecting lactations in golden buckets.

Doctor Moreau

I used to go back and forth.
On Brando’s insane portrayal.
Of Doctor Moreau.
I used to wear eyeliner to class.
Now I insist on wearing.
My own ice bucket.
And other people insist.
On staying away.
It’s a lovely day.
On some other green planet.

There are miniatures and echoes.
I used to blow soap bubbles.
From the open third-floor window.
When you didn’t want to do so alone.
It’s kind of neat to think.
About that thin line.
Between saving the world.
And acting like such a fuck-wad.
That only the most broken.
Among us respond to our efforts.

Glen Armstrong holds an MFA in English from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and teaches writing at Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan. He edits a poetry journal called Cruel Garters and has three current books of poems: Invisible Histories, The New Vaudeville, and Midsummer. His work has appeared in Poetry Northwest, Conduit, and Cream City Review.