Chorus Ensemble

 

Chorus Ensemble

 

I make my own music, a promise

Tied to strings until I learned to untie them

My father’s fourth son but 

Only the third left with the hope

Keeping in the cage of our bones 

This is its day

Clear as spirits

Grief dislodges

Comes in with an ocean-roar

Foam splashing onto the shoreline

Lapping onto

Its salt eroding things away

Its teeth pulling skin from my fingers

The blood is pulled back and under with each wave

And we watch, it’s coming again

That gush of the shore and

Loopback to before

The first time seeing ourselves in the ocean

The first time the sky saw itself in a lake

The window is an opening that divides and

We continue to whirl on Earth

Holding a plastic cup of impatience pissing on death and flowers

There’s youth flashing smiles around like there’s no stopping the sun from rising or the moon from phasing

Turning into something new ###

 

Mitchell Flanagan

  

Mitchell Flanagan is an artist, writer, and musician. His poems have appeared in the magazine The Chronogram in August of 2010 and December 2011. His work has previously appeared in Ariel Chart in April of 2020. He's currently working on short stories, novels, and poetry books. He also writes songs, plays bass, and sings with his band Cold Heaven. He lives and sleeps occasionally in Newburgh, New York.