five poems

A.L. Nielsen

Long-listed

At long last

No more to be sold short

As an afterword

No more to be sold on

An afterworld

If we could only resonate together

This could be the last time

Sunshine on my shudder

Start me up Buttercup

This could be the last time

May be the last time

I don’t know

Sky Poses

An open question

At the shore

The sky poses

A coy gathering of clouds

Against our steaming hopes

At risk of storm

Shifting from last year’s

To last years

The central truth of song

Emerging from a rush

Of punctuated listening

And surf crash

Against all

Our

Expectation

The Night We Opened for the Buckinghams and I Didn’t Hear the Buckinghams

The shortest distance between

Two high school auditoriums

Was a song and a Silvertone

And a Pontiac

Sound check straining

Against their image spreading

Cream across kind

Of a Drag the singer

Nowhere to be seen

You Don’t Care

Hey Baby They’re Playing Our Song

Of That G That Is In Phlegm

foreign

sign

deign

gnash

campaign

sovereign

alight

high

slight

gnaw

nigh

assign

malign

night

Close to the close

An effacement of those

Nights’ daring

Undoing drew nigh

The merely near

Withdrew

Gave way

Gave place to the might

Of what may

Have been

The daughters of earth and darkness

Gave promise

Grave possession

Of the altered

In this way

The gravitons

Saved the inaudible

From the indelible