Steven Minchin is a 37 year old post 2:00 AM troubadour in New York’s capital. His work has appeared in Heavy Hands Ink, mad swirl, Right Hand Pointing, Four and Twenty, and vox poetica. Steven lives alone and paints murals of crowds.
POEMS
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QUENELLE
Your vile ire was only an issue when wet
And wet was how we got by
After, we’d tell ourselves
It was only angst -or never happened at all
Well, you’d tell me
Irate again in the late day heat
We called morning
Still wet and burning on the inside
But denied by sweet vitriol
Fueled by a damp and destroyed memory
TEAR
in the back of the train, behind something
something is being ripped like a metronome
it comes forward, the destruction
of page after page and it’s only because
we’re aware of the shredder behind the metered tear
do we want to know what
what this unseen stranger’s pages say and why
it’s so important that they die in this place
in the front of the shredder’s head something
must have been echoing, a thought
that up here we all heard the words
beating into the stained, beige tray
hanging on the back of another stranger’s seat
silent there, knowing the energy
vacillating across his hands
his turbine left and combine right
there’s a new pulse in the car
a push between a heavy collected hush
and the brutal beat of a strange tear-spark-tear
electricity now conducted, lured up
up through the burning rails below
in the back of the train, behind something
something is pulsing with its sudden rhythm
behind some secret rage a tear is lit up
and an endless shredding fills this space
it comes forward, the destruction
something hot beating on the front
the front of the shredder’s head
takes over his hands, begins to destroy
and leave us all silent, mesmerized by this beating
RELAXING THE POINT
relaxed proceeds
and erodes depth
caught up in
diminishing my own phrases
coming up
with your wet
test excuse:
gin
beer
with
basil
while the beach empties
right
past the rooftop
where
we parked
lumps of displaced
sand on
bulges-
you accented
your trunks with binoculars-
nothing came
out of your mouth-
my martini in
now usurping
diminishment
proven
by elaboration:
silent
that point over
diluted and made
over again
CROWD HAUNTS FAILED TREATMENTS
your cat just watched me stealthily put some old lemon chicken in
for breakfast scare me suddenly
and get used to the staring through the back window
your Effexor- actually Squeaky someone’s- is between the house
my bedroom actually- and the rotting side of the last step
I try to ignore the backyard but can’t turn my head
it’s known that nothing ever happens out there
but every thirty seven minutes I check in
and try to make off with a little of its pinkness
even when it’s dark the grass is clear
save maybe the occasional long black spot
moving across the ground toward one of our doors
you call your cat Crow and I never ask why and it doesn’t bother
me- much- that he probably knows some of my secrets
I cure morning by having it at night- covered with a variety of smokes
I have tremors right outside- every nine to nineteen minutes
I’m afraid of the same things that twitch at my feet when called by name
even though they’re with me every day- ill and misplaced
