Tag Archives: boston

A MILLION TINY PIECES (ONE GIANT MACHINE)

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america is ducking behind desks in classrooms
america is running out the exit door
america is locking their front doors
back doors windows storing up their water
putting on their deadlocks, padlocks
america has been bruised, but america
will recover, we are not made to be
victims of fear, we are made to be
those who grow in fear

we are the cactus flower
that can grow
in the middle of the desert
we are the new moon
unseen but ever present
we are a part
of the human race
we are buried
by terror
but we are grassroots movements
of insanely
insanely insanely insanely
powerful fucking momentum
we take debris
and make it into mosaics
beautiful mosaics
that we plaster onto dead walls
onto empty buildings
that we fill with love
when the floodgates
are opened
we learn how to swim

we are the wall of people
drowning out the westboro sounds
of hatred
we are the loudest country
on earth
but we know
how to mourn
in silence

a bomb is one giant machine
that explodes
into a million tiny pieces
but america
is a million tiny pieces
that come together
to form
one
giant
machine.

COPYRIGHT BRICE MAIURRO 2013

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“A SUMMER CIGAR” BY NICI E. BROWN

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Recently, I ran into this poem and thought it was fantastic. I know it’s the middle of winter, but I think maybe that is the best time for a summer cigar.

A Summer Cigar

Glass splits burgundy into facets
through the crystal ball of a wine glass
that has no power to tell the future,
only quiet it down to a numbness.
I have to laugh at the idea
of a ten dollar bottle of wine paired
with a ten dollar cigar.
It takes four matches to light -
What hidden pleasures
will the thick, spicy smoke enhance
in my cheap Malbec?I hear the neighbors cursing at each other,
taking the stress of back-to-back retail jobs
and a janitorial position during graveyards
out on the family they work for,
the bus hydraulics hissing from Meridian,
an immigrant grandmother laughing as she ticks
off hopscotch numbers with her first-generation
grand-daughter in between planting
her soon-to-be blooming annuals in the neat
boxes of her tiny Garden of Eden
in poor East Boston, a pristine space, the only thing
still sandwiched between calamity and the sea.

Smoke curls from my lips
to cast about into the breeze.
I have to keep pace with the cigar
and carefully note the wind’s strength.
If I smoke too little
the flame will go out.
Sometimes I think we could break with the intensity
that’s in the beauty of a single moment in our own skins
but the taste is fleeting,
quick to be scattered away.

Life only deals out
happiness fractured into fragments
here and there, from time to time.
For some reason, I always reach
for the same happiness recipe
though I never have the same ingredients.
You’ve got to learn to cook what’s in your kitchen.

It’s been a long winter, so
get drunk on summer, and spin
what love you can from the warm air.

When the cigar burns down,
the closer [it] gets to my lips, the
sparser my breaths become, or
it’ll burn too hot.

READ MORE POEMS BY NICI E. BROWN

READ “A GIRL NAMED AMERICA” BY ME, BRICE MAIURRO

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