• Skip to main content
  • Skip to secondary navigation
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Painted Bride Quarterly

  • About
    • About PBQ
    • People
  • Issues
    • Current Issue
    • Past Issues
    • Print Annuals
  • Podcast
    • Latest Podcast
    • All Podcasts
  • News & Events
  • Submit
  • Shop
  • Fiction
  • Poetry
  • Prose
  • Contributors
  • Current Issue

Dante Micheaux: Vis-à-vis de Rien

May 11, 2011 by PBQ

Chaos is a hanging thread—minor
but out of place, insignificant in infinity,
says the keeper of Shangri-la.

On the corner of Trinity and Church,
a small girl offers me the sun for a nickel
and I’d gladly take control of the solar system

but do not have a nickel.
The sun, with its watery-urine yellow
and burning stench, is bitter; its rays are loud.

Give me the moon, free and great pacifist—
a showstopper when it wants to be.
Even Clotho spun at its pace.

Fear the insignificant, says the
keeper of Shangri-la. Because there is one,
there are many.

Consider the infauna
that will someday rule the world,
their benthic plots.

Life is? Six eggs in one basket,
half dozen in the other. It’s the soft bottom
of pride that gets in the way.

That which surrounds has its own trickery.
Don’t be fooled by the butterfly;
it would kill if only its mouth were bigger.

Filed Under: Contributors 82, Issue 82, Poetry, Poetry 82 Tagged With: Contributors 82, Dante Micheaux, Poetry, Poetry 82

Primary Sidebar

Recent News & Events

PBQ @ AWP!

PBQ Poet’s Publishing Premier: Carlos Andrés Gómez’s Fractures

Issue 100 Has Arrived!

Temporarily Closing Submissions

PBQ presents: Slam Bam Reboot

© 2020 Painted Bride Quarterly. Contact PBQ: info@pbqmag.org