Airbag Blooms

The airbag blooms
A gunshot flower just in time
My pollen soaked face
Now the bees
Snarl at the glass
Trying the handles
I don’t have my eyes
Yet forming a picture
Of just how I got here

Yell mama
Yelled mama
The flame’s getting closer
You have to let go
The lifts are all broken
You just have to leap this
Is your mama speaking
Just go
Just go
I’ll be here

The stitching rooms
Clutching at echoes
Just out of the ether
I don't know their names
The bees
Pestle my face
With their tiny mortars
I don't have my legs
Thighs deep in the waters
Of just how I got here

Yell mama
Yelled mama
The flame’s getting closer
You have to let go
The lifts are all broken
You just have to leap this
Is your mama speaking
Just go
Just go
I’ll be here

~ Brendan Bonsack

Facts About Dinosaurs

I like facts about dinosaurs.
Sometimes, when I tell people facts about dinosaurs,
they begin counting backwards in their heads.
But I still like them.
Fossil fuels are not dinosaurs.
Even though there were lots of dinosaurs,
they are in fact very difficult to find.
Not everything turns to stone, and lasts a billion years.
When I was a kid,
my nana gave me a large pictorial volume about dinosaurs,
because she knew that I loved them.
I took it to school.
The sixth grader Adam stole it and tore the pages.
Because he knew the same.
I never told my nana about the book. I didn’t know it then, but
I think I was ashamed.
The Brontosaurus never existed.
It was made up, an Apatosaurus body with a Camarasaurus head.
Back in the day,
mustachioed palaeontologists were locked in a rivalry
to find the most bones and give them names.
Bronto, meaning thunder, and sauro for lizard.
Apatelos, from the Greek – deceptive.
For decades, the Pittsburgh Museum of Natural History
had exhibited a cockentrice.
Posed mid-stride by wires for the peoples’ fascination.
Nana used to tell a story of how she lost her job, before she was married,
before my father even had a father of his own,
how she punched the foreman in the nose.
She told me never to do that, but always laughing as she did.
That’s not a fact about dinosaurs.
Or, then again, maybe it is.

~ Brendan Bonsack

Dusk Birds

Sitting with your death
The dusk-birds chattering
Way past their bed

The broached and
The blue-rinsed
Laughing in their language
All their way to
Their morning mass

The softly chin
Of a dog on my lap
A fire red bottlebrush
Quivering in a hover and a hum
I bought a page of headlines
And don’t understand
A single one

It sends you to bed, this feeling
Without any supper, this feeling
Tucks you like a nurse
Under starch white
Covers, it loves you
Loves you
Loves you
Until you go to flower, then cuts
And leaves you water
Just enough to get well soon

Leafing through your life
The left hand lettering
Finally being read

No history of this
Beehive hair and crimson dress
The stove piped man with a punch bowl spoon
And sweetest kiss
Is not the father

It's for the best
The Sisters said
The silent ride home
The unbearable sunset

The dog you found
By the factories
That followed you everywhere
You nearly named me after him

It sends you to bed, this feeling
Without any supper, this feeling
Tucks you like a nurse
Under starch white
Covers, it loves you
Loves you
Loves you
Until you go to flower, then cuts
And leaves you water
Just enough to get well soon

~ Brendan Bonsack

Caught in the Storm

I cut you a flower
My favorite, because
I don’t know yours
And I was coming around

But there was this storm
The one, the one
Everyone was waiting for.

I palmed it and wrapped it
In my soggy paper news
And when that failed, used
My cardigan, the pills
Of wool hunkering in the deluge.

By your corner, in my thumb
And finger there remained
A simple stem, I
Had bled a lot of petals
Watched them tumble,
Glowing, so vivid
Along the drains.

So I wonder
What you’d make of me
Stood at your door, holding a stick.

Can you think of something clever, please
Or quickly grab a vase, at least?

~ Brendan Bonsack