Two Poems, by Pearl Pirie

 

jeep in a teacup! what a covet object
 

will I forget, or regret lost chance? want want want
like a loon song echoing across the night lake. 

it means something symbolic but what is it
trying to grasp? the need beyond the object… 

skip the middleman of purchase and hook ankle
around tree as I stumble, leda clay slide. 

by daylight’s sidewalk scramble the purity of
desire is masked, jumbled into Everything Else 

in personal semblance of Citizen Kane, mementoes
with memories escape like radon. 

lines of chipped statues, icons of youth, dusty
drop cloths over display cases of prowess 

in the warehouse of regrettables that is usually
dubbed overflow past, usually locked up tight 

but something jiggling has me jimmying my way
in squeezing sideways through stacks 

for lack of better way to distract myself from
fraught hope. what habits are making me? 

if I used a forklift to shift or ram these pallets,
I’d get no exercise or order. Michelangelo’s rays 

but no eureka. my distress is sacred and can’t
be wasted, frittered vaguely on what-ifs.

after hours of talking, music then windshield wipers

"mere prattle without practice"
Iago, Othello 

oncoming transport trailers are
exclamation points tumbling over hills 

all these comma cars come on
tired as a Karma Chameleon. 

I’ve concentrated for hours
at a snow screen of star fields. 

there are podcasts from places
I’ve never been but diverting still. 

did your kindergarten class also
draw crayon fishes? my coelacanth's gills. 

then a distressing wash
of black, but it rolls off fish scales 

the defiant yellow fins, each sheet
an aquarium in cinderblock jail.

Pearl Pirie's fourth published poetry collection was footlights (Radiant Press, 2020). rain’s smallg estures (Apt 9 Press, Sept 2021) is her chapbook of minimalist poems which won the 2022 Nelson Ball Prize. Her most recent is, Heat Lamp (above/ground, 2025) Her author site is www.pearlpirie.com