The Continuing Story of Misirlou
The Bedside Book of Open Windows
The Continuing Story of Misirlou
The weather report predicts that Cairo
will fall
from the sky
for a while.
And if I describe you
as a type “more strange
than beautiful,”
it’s only that there is so much more
strange than beautiful
in my world,
and you inhabit it all:
The conger eel escaping
its wicker basket.
The glorious life
cycle of the sphinx.
It’s either you or the sky.
Cities lit up
or the satellite photos
revealing each crime scene
as a tourist destination.
It’s an ancient song we sing.
It’s one continuous free fall
though the bells safely ring
for now from their fire-
resistant towers.
The Bedside Book of Open Windows
No one listening.
A sleeping world shutting
down,
block by block,
square by square
as if losing power
on its imaginary grid.
But I heard the lone flutist
maybe a block away
conceding fragments of arias,
pop songs and the ragged
hoodies of runaways
to the night,
setting right the mistaken
notion that everything’s wrong
with the universe
if we’re still breathing
at 4:00 a.m.
I was breathing. I was cold.
I was too old
to run away.
I was listening and trying
to pick out the kinds
of melody that break
a song apart.
Glen Armstrong’s recent work has appeared in Conduit, Digital Americana and Cloudbank. He holds an MFA in English from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and teaches writing at Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan. He also edits a poetry journal called Cruel Garters.
