Postmodern Poetry – Xanax Pop by Lewis LaCook

Ohio is warm and sick with winds.
Trains moan through winter evening dark,
memorializing distance. Explosions poppy,
woven from pixels from an abandoned game

in the woods; Alex found an arm there,
lying on the grass. It was grasping coughs.
This is what it means to be precious.

The War rouged over, grumpy, wearing your
sweater, won’t cool if you blow on it.
We grew up in imagined engines, in graveyards
lying face-down among a pool of rhododendron.

We made honey. And all our lower levels flood.

You woke up, and you couldn’t breathe, so
you can’t possibly be saying this now. Besides

the pronouns are confused, and academics
will tell you such “splintering
of identity” is dangerous. Dangerous

for you, a young black woman,
proud and in complete control
of your destiny. As a long-haired

white boy, joint dangling from ironic-
slid mouth, the sidewise reference

places you square outside the dominant discourse.
Picasso and Braque could do it, but

the women in the room distract them both.
Who needs this shit, anyway? Poetry
promises to lift you out of your skin

just for a moment, but it doesn’t explain
how disappointed you’ll be to come back down.