Two Poems from Nate Pritts
B i g E x p e c t a t i o n s
It was a movie about people
surrounded by trees & trapped
by the bark or it was a heavily researched report
about the qualities of charismatic leaders
or it was a song, you know the one,
that goes na-na-na-na, yeah yeah.
This was on the Sunday after
I didn’t see you all weekend
& you were eating breakfast in Memphis
or else it was that Thursday
we ate Chinese around a crowded round table
when we really wanted burgers
or it was that Monday holiday
when we didn’t want to move.
I know the sun was yellow in a blue sky
although maybe it was raining & had been
for weeks & would keep pouring.
Somewhere, a bird. Someone we didn’t expect
to be rocking in a chair on a porch
was, in fact, rocking in a chair on a porch
& our big expectations were shattered
& shattered, every day shattered.
T i n R h i n o
Duty-bound, outdated relic, forgotten:
the tin rhino stands outside—forever
outside—bolted to its rough wooden podium. Tin rhino: refugee
from some dream, well-intentioned but inarticulate
statement about the rogue mechanisms of nature,
rampaging animalistic machinery.
Thousands of grass blades, crushed under the tin
rhino’s tin feet, scream silent green screams.
*
Jokes (overheard) at the expense of the tin rhino—
: I wouldn’t sit near that end
(points)
of the tin rhino!
: Can it hear me? It can’t hear me.
: (of birds nesting in his open metal mouth)
they don’t know what
they’re getting into.
: I wonder who made it,
that old sad rusted beast.
*
Knock & echoes where his heart should be.
It waits for us to pour ourselves into it. Out of place,
clunky, ultimately useless, the very existence of the tin rhino—
of any tin rhino—forces us to recognize our own tin rhinos.
He (it is a he) asks us (he begs us) to tell him what
to do with his comical horn. Should he tear
open the sky, can he hope to catch the passing clouds?
*
Love song of the tin rhino—
Please: acknowledge my wanting.
Please: I notice you.
Please: stand close.
Let me steal three smiles & look at your body alive.
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