Michael Keenan

After Rimbaud on/ the Moonwalk

Apartment one

is vacant.

What vanity, to think

my friend and

I could last.

Chartreuse dawn, mystical river, we laugh

at the morning joggers.

What arrogance, to

think

my heart’s

summer was an amber crow in

an eternal film noir.

The Guermantes Way

A train to Brussels, a French
song, May

there be moonlight when I a-
-wake

In the river of 862 diamond-mirrors

Meadowlarks, and a few stars
with

long names, names

you make up.

We’ll take three footsteps. Aphrodite will breathe. We’ll bring Rimbaud’s

rib-basket to live on forever.

Michael Keenan’s first book of poems, Translations On Waking In An Italian Cemetery, will be released by A-Minor Press in the spring of 2014. His writing has appeared in the PEN Poetry Series, Fence, Alice Blue Review, RealPoetik, NYQ Reviews, inter|rupture, Shampoo, Paul Revere’s Horse, and Arsenic Lobster, among others. Michael currently talks to people at Columbia University.

This entry was posted in Poetry by Posit Editor. Bookmark the permalink.

About Posit Editor

Susan Lewis (susanlewis.net) is the Editor-in-chief and founder of Posit (positjournal.com) and the author of ten books and chapbooks, including Zoom (winner of the Washington Prize), Heisenberg's Salon, This Visit, and State of the Union. Her poetry has appeared in anthologies such as Walkers in the City (Rain Taxi), They Said (Black Lawrence Press), and Resist Much, Obey Little (Dispatches/Spuyten Duyvil), as well as in journals such as Agni, Boston Review, The Brooklyn Rail, Conjunctions online, Diode, Interim, New American Writing, and VOLT.