Two poems by Brian Beatty
"Pockets" and "How the Universe Works"
Pockets
The old man made room enough in his pockets, somehow, to hold an entire lifetime of regrets in the shape of a folding knife full of broken blades, a rusted, busted tire air pressure gauge, a ring of keys that only locked what they fit and an unredeemed fortune in loose change, all of it from countries as far away and foreign to him as the strange notion of a phone you carry everywhere in case someone suddenly remembers everything they can’t say to your face.
How the Universe Works
I’m out with the dog for the night when the kid next door, up well past a five or six-year-old’s bedtime, emerges from the trees carrying a jar easily the size of his head full of blinking yellow fireflies. The dog barks. Or I do, quietly, to myself. Here’s hoping some wise parent or grandparent who knows about these things told the boy to punch holes in the lid. No oxygen, no light.
About the author: Brian Beatty is the author of five poetry collections and a spoken word album. Beatty’s poems and short stories have appeared in The American Journal of Poetry, Anti-Heroin Chic, The Appalachian Journal, Conduit, Cowboy Jamboree, CutBank, Evergreen Review, Exquisite Corpse, Floyd County Moonshine, Gigantic, Gulf Coast, Hoosier Noir, McSweeney’s, The Missouri Review, Monkeybicycle, The Moth, One Art, The Quarterly, Rattle, Seventeen, The Southern Review, Strange Horizons and Sycamore Review.