ALAN BRITT

ROBIN

Robin poses like a sweet potato amongst  

the saffron eyelids of our Norway maple.

Robin, turmeric dust coughed up by dusk 

behind a branch of banana-bruised maples.

Robin, innocent to bloodstained South 

African diamonds, Cambodian rubies, but

knows plenty about earthworm hideouts.

Robin, kaleidoscope singing about things

that need singing about regarding the present, 

less about the past, & nothing for the future.

Robin, in split-tail sweet potato finest, puffs 

smoke in the shape of a ghost orchid before

folding her asbestos shingles for the evening.

GARAGE BAND

(For David Beasley: 1948-1995)

We sang, Beaz & I, Tell me why

you cry & why you lie to me.

We muscled up to Sam the Sham

& harmonized with the Ides of March

during an Ides of March spring

farewell to ‘67—Mod collars flared

for iconic mating crab in the midst

of high school angst!

We shouted, I’ll cry instead from

the balmy windows of our caterpillar

bus bustling Military Trail pines

on its way to the end of the line.

Oh, Beaz, whatever happened to

all the wonderful things we said today?

[Italics by John Lennon & Paul McCartney]

Alan Britt served as judge for the 2018 The Bitter Oleander Press Library of Poetry Book Award. He was interviewed at The Library of Congress for The Poet and the Poem and has published 18 books of poetry. Alan served as Art Agent for the late great Ultra Violet and often read poetry in her Chelsea, New York studio. He was been nominated for the 2021 International Janus Pannonius Prize awarded by the Hungarian Centre of PEN International for excellence in poetry from any part of the world. A graduate of the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University he currently teaches English/Creative Writing at Towson University.