• Skip to 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

Max Lasky: Prothalamion Poured from a Copper Cezve

March 11, 2022 by PBQ Leave a Comment

Zuleyha read my fortune
in the dried coffee grinds 
 
and tossed the saucer toward 
the future, its arc across
 
rented a chemtrail through 
the sky, and I didn’t ask why, 
 
I didn’t point it out or make 
a scene about the vision 
 
I’d been led to believe, as if 
with a shovel in a lame novel, 
 
as if my ears were a septic chute
that accepted every story,
 
no matter how far from true.
I didn’t mention my nomad past
 
or how my brain’s forced from place
to place in caravans, canal boats,
 
tents reeking of frankincense, pine, 
or how that’s just another story 
 
I’d been fed with a shovel.
I realized somewhat early on 
 
in this early life that most people
are eager to live their lives
 
like stars beyond a projector, 
a drive in, seemingly unaware 
 
of the dark screen, and willing 
to wrong anyone if it means
 
someone lifts the loose noose
from their own bowed necks—
 
they almost sprint down the steps. 
I crawl up the steps to every
 
bad decision I’ve let happen, 
happy to say I’ve changed, 
 
took notes on each mistake
and if I ever turned back 
 
I was sure to take a different path.
When I go home to the house
 
I grew up in, it’s not to stay.
As for the story, neither one of us
 
could say if it was imagined. 
I wake some mornings to find 
 
signs that don’t make sense, 
suspicious of my own breath
 
and the sunlight through the slats,
because the world’s senseless
 
and nonsensical and tense. 
A paranoiac and a high priestess
 
make for one hell of a couple, 
our studio’s more like a circus, 
 
we’re trapeze swingers swooping
from corner to corner, blowing 
 
clown horns as we paint our faces 
in a shattered mirror. Our strict 
 
schedule requires us to weep 
all day and dance at night, 
 
saying I’m so fucking lucky
I met you. I’m so fucking lucky…
 
I rejoice, I digress, I paint two 
red lines under each of our eyes 
 
and step in line, waiting stone like.
I’m well aware it could be me
 
paranoid and schizophrenic
on the side of the street, paranoid
 
past repair, not knowing where 
the self ends and society begins, 
 
it could easily be me if not 
for five or six good people. 
 
As for the lover, I’m damn sure.
I put a poem around her finger
 
because I couldn’t afford a ring,
which means I’m always already
 
all in. I push the stack of chips
to the center of the table. I grin.

Filed Under: Issue 101, Poetry 101 Tagged With: Max Lasky

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

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