1 of 2 poems by Marc McKee | next »

Some Little Movie

  1. Lousy with suicides
  2. the unicycle paths, lousy
  3. with umbrellas
  4. the Olympic pool
  5. and I am dismantled
  6. by the love I suspect
  7. in the air—I can hear
  8. the ocean in your question,
  9. yeah, yeah and beside
  10. the crosswalk, a man
  11. playing an accordion.
  12. This can be one movie.
  13. This can be one thousand
  14. little movies like the window
  15. shattered into a delta
  16. of glass teeth. Sequins.
  17. Freckles. The man
  18. is young, the man
  19. is wearing a facsimile
  20. of the hats worn
  21. by those bent on
  22. ascending the Alps
  23. in movies about
  24. ascending the Alps.
  25. I fix something
  26. and two other somethings
  27. break. You know
  28. this, you know what it is
  29. to walk all the way home
  30. carrying a live coal,
  31. tripping through
  32. an upset reliquary.
  33. Like a live risk
  34. whose equilibrium
  35. has never not
  36. been crippled.
  37. You know I won’t stop
  38. asking by breathing
  39. to carry this cup
  40. as far as you want.
About the Author

Marc McKee received his MFA from the University of Houston and is currently pursuing a PhD at the University of Missouri in Columbia, where he lives with his wife, Camellia Cosgray. Recent work appears in Boston Review, Conduit, and Low Rent, and is forthcoming from Handsome and Barn Owl Review. His chapbook, What Apocalypse?, won the 2008 NMP/Diagram Chapbook Contest, and his full-length collection, Fuse, is forthcoming in 2011 from Black Lawrence Press.