SAM LOHMANN
On Social Mirages
In winter sun
the cars’ shadows
jump alongside
and veer up into your
lane but let’s not
trace the whole freeway!
after the rise
of the overpass
mirages that
persist get pretty
boring to explain
or practice:
how, in the act
of using it up
can you ask
if it’s any use
anymore? when
collage-I
is talking again,
who does the walking?
montage guy,
putting in a word
like calling it a utility bike
as a way of sneering
at the desire to ever get
anywhere,
veering into your crowd
of recognizables,
what you’d call
your lane, lit
by winter sun
at angles, fast.
Against the Moment
A parallel feeling? Doesn’t sound so terrible but then
some of us know how to modulate
the chest cavity? Pops
in and out of alignment
with earth and trees? Not my fault
we live in a country where touches don’t meet
and have no need for traffic circles
on our way from crystal into conifer
so when we make paths they double
up like tiny pine-
needle refrains, choruses
of bobby pins. You have my permission
to splash your face and forget them.
Not that you’d ever need it, it’s
gratuitous, hats off, little
fingers up in the air, an ever
more unlandable plane booming
out its shyness
as am I
apparently? Ugh. The rest is history,
the lickable kind. Look for me there
resisting the national pastime, passing
out under the eglantine.
Some other time
we’re touch and go
and hardly recognizable,
though truth be told your expression hasn’t changed.
If you felt like tickling the void, though,
well, we could start anywhere.
How soon?
Her Song
Missing a city for her sins
Venus of the cowboy songs
reads of the lost cities
how were they lost? in wheels in wheels?
and what comes after cowboy songs?
No development. Quiet quitting.
Try not to give a rat’s ass
out in the August-white basalt
and oatstraw west. This passing gesture
city, pink, deciduous, rambling
where you hear her sing:
All the while been a patient of signals
All the while been a prisoner of emeralds
It’s how I arrived at the gulches of roses
It’s how I perish the thought
All the while and shake the vine
Bake the cabbage I wanted you
To know me by for all this while
It’s how I leave a trail
of perfect emeralds
no I didn’t
I can’t decide about thought and health
I’d rather be burlesque
spiral into friskiness
and what comes after cowboy songs?
me, Venus of the cowboy songs
takin’ a free ride
here on the world’s only naturally occurring railroad
like a young skunk in an old tire
Effective Venus of the skunk
Affected lady of sufficient cause, rose madder
attar and planned skin glow
Somebody open a window
For all of life preparing a sniff
Been ready to climb out all this while
Lists of flowers don’t mind me
It’s how I prepare a dehydrated grove
Before and in advance of fire
How much they mind me standing around
It’s how I chop the day “up”
Not a comment on how we hold ourselves
(“out”)
Isn’t this a neat wreck anymore
It’s carefree when the windows meet the water
In the headlights
In my song
Sam Lohmann lives in Vancouver, Washington, and works as an academic librarian. He is the author of several books and chapbooks including Stand on this picnic bench and look north (Publication Studio, 2011) and Unless As Stone Is (eth press, 2014); poems have appeared recently in the magazine Luigi Ten Co. He is a co-organizer of the long-running Spare Room reading series in Portland.