Tag Archives: Brennan Sprague

Closer Than They Appear

Beyond this floor-to-ceiling glass,

blue dusk—waterfall coursing my limbs,

dousing me in its paternal rage—

airtight window, you cannot hear

the screeching streams,

the teething trees scratching the wind,

outstretching

brittle branches to the moon’s dribbling milk—

a father reunites with his son

after a decade apart—

whispers piercing porcelain plates—soup steam

rising upwards, apparition

here to warn us

of the pitiless depths—

of our newborn skulls—

of the way the lamps in the restaurant dimmed as

our futures waned &

dusk drifted into night,

that blue light here for those spare seconds

scavenged into sapphire—

we are the last table—

the cerulean neon

burnished the pavement, echoed

in the puddles—

the falls deafening, devouring

the bones that hold us,

those adrift hitchhikers—

strangers to Chevys sliding

across slicked highways—

seeing in every rain-specked windshield

the faces of our mother & father—

waiting ceaselessly for

them to slow to a stop & flick their blinkers,

gazing at us in the foggy rearview

mirrors, slowly nearing

their sealed doors, reddening ears peeled for

the divine click of the lock

 

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Brennan Sprague studies creative writing at MCC.

Forest for the Trees

Your phantom limb cradled the newborn lamb—

charcoal hooves shined & polished, gnarled bleating

echoing among the diamond coos. Sipping Pepsi

from a plastic straw while smoking Leika cigarettes.

Lamplight spurs through white-curtained windows,

chanting on about the ends of things, our desires,

our exhalations in the hushed evenings where we sit

beside their cleaved openings perfuming the summer

with our tiny crafted deaths. Shepherd guiding the wolf

through the godless field. The sky’s wound blistering

& wilting, peonies sprouting from our shoulder blades

like the slivering of smoke scalpelled from the stars.

The lamb lowered & placed gently on the grass—

away into the swaying stalks, our bodies orbiting

pitched needles, the crackling of the holy crickets,

our crystallized foreheads against the cool glass.

The lamb’s white coat dissipating into the unknowable.

Sauntering quietly into the dream, eyeing the forest

for the trees—those spectral ladders, this spackle

of a white particle, quenching the ecstatic dark,

from which you were never born

 

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Brennan Sprague studies creative writing at MCC.