Three Poems

Cutscene

Actually, it is my beeswax what combs

over encomiums, honeys up

reproofs to prove

the har har

you are.

Killing blows’ve bled slowest

over cheap speakers so easily made jape

by playing threnodies diegetically during

screen tests flunked & pedantries thus

trussed crutchly. Paltry parts altho stubs

pencil in blisters for hematomas

gussied up with one

sweet nudge : every so often, ever so

softly. truly, I do begrudge.

Upstanding

If he wonted, he’d

wood to dutifully shelve

the selves

helping delusions

             dissemble

as anxious brackets

attach.

Lacunah

If not one thing, then

another, always something,

or so it's said, yet if not that,

the missing it, what

then? Getting along’s

in the going

along, common cause

altered until the tale’s

teller’s irrelevant, his sentence

contingent on obfuscation

since he’s too obtuse

to collude.

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Chris McCreary's latest book of poems, awry, was published in 2024 by White Stag. He lives in South Philadelphia and on IG at @chris___mccreary.