4 poems by Christopher Mulrooney

the boulevard

the spindle-leg reviewers sat on the fly of a sailor's suit
and squirmed to beat the band

the tall ships entered the harbor
like hobby-horses in the stable of a speculator

my compatriot

he savvies near as much as possible
the ornamental truth of any mirror
he tells them as he passes gaily
unreflective with a glint that's tiny
it might be a million years for him under the wan hot blazing sun
and then again he and his kind might rove to moon and maidens
fall back like a petal in an ass's ear and laughingly
pretend the chorus of Don Giovanni
played itself nightly around his slum with fountains
rising mightily in the air as far as possible
cascading like a pis-aller down there

the sewing circle

here you have the fine old art
competes for face time on the Peeb
you make it out of scraps and rags
in which the discerning movie eye
of a born director on the sill looking out at the day
sees oh such things a roundelay
upside down a thousand things sideways something else
this too the art of making art
is stolidly discussed on telly

the city

it's not a bad story really
not so's you'd notice anyways
it doesn't go
or do much
doesn't say what it wants
to have it says have nothing else
and then it walks to the corner store for something
it admires the hills you've read it before
shut up in the library
that's alive and kicking out with boots or waders
nothing else a Winslow Homer hat for rain
yellow or gray a slicker too
perhaps same color
a pulley


Christopher Mulrooney has written poems in The Delinquent, Vanitas, Guernica and Beeswax.
His own website is here