Poetryzine magazine presents the selected poems by the American poet Glen Armstrong
A More Beautiful Swarm They are laughing at me. They are swarming and blocking my view of a more beautiful swarm. All of my theories on form and content have been displaced if not disproven. They dissolve like grape Kool-Aid and then gather at the bottom of my glass, like dead bees between a window and its screen. Origami This could be narrated by bank tellers as a small boy chases pigeons with a stick in the bank parking lot or it could be folded into an origami bird so most of the words are hidden inside the creature until the paper bird attempts to sing this poem and only you and you alone would hear my voice amid the squawking and flying away from the origami boy with the origami stick that he has folded from pages torn from an enormous Norton anthology while meanwhile the bank tellers daydream on a slow Tuesday afternoon. Cherry Cola II Sometimes, regardless of who is listening, a vinyl record undresses. Children leave us messages on the sidewalk in pink and mint, their only language, hopscotch. The top of our heads ping away, an octave above the plastic voodoo pins in our hearts. Sister and I take art lessons with a nun who mentions our family resemblance with a malice so subtle that neither of us much mind. These are days of braided thorn bushes. We only intend to expose our gums; the teeth are just a bonus.