Charlie Brice won the 2020 Field Guide Poetry Magazine Poetry Contest and placed third in the 2021 Allen Ginsberg Poetry Prize. His sixth full-length poetry collection is Pinnacles of Hope (Impspired Books, 2022). His poetry has been nominated three times for both the Best of Net Anthology and the Pushcart Prize and has appeared in Atlanta Review, The Honest Ulsterman, The Galway Review, Ibbetson Street, The Paterson Literary Review, Impspired Magazine, and elsewhere.
Shadows on Our Bedroom Floor
Wisteria and oak leaves pulse
across our bedroom carpet
on this sun-glad Thursday
in Pittsburgh.
Who could possibly kill himself
after gazing at this inverse world?
Window panes divide this shadow-art
into unpalpable portions, portraits
of natural motion.
The tragedies of existence
shrink up against this moment
of mad glory, this tiny
life-preserver floating
on the quotidian sea.
No bullet, no noose, no plunge
into the abyss is necessary now,
only the presence of this
priceless bequest—
its lambent grace,
its lilting peace.
Stinky
I look past my laptop
at the foldout couch
in my third-floor study,
the couch where Stinky,
my little gray cat,
would relax when she
wasn’t clinging to me
for hours while I wrote.
She would break her grip
periodically to gently place
her nose against my nose.
Stinky didn’t always groom
herself. She had an odor,
but with her nose pressed
against mine, I smelled
the most treasured perfume.
It was on that pull-out couch,
the one I’m looking at now,
that my Stinky suddenly died.
I look at that couch and my heart,
even years after her death,
hurls down an empty elevator
shaft in my chest.
The day after she died a song
sparrow landed and lingered
on my study’s windowsill.
No song flew from her beak
that day, but her watchful eye stared
straight into my soul. She was,
of course, Stinky in her bird disguise,
returned to ensure that I would be okay
in my lonely study without her, that
I would continue, alone, with only
the tiny holes her claws had made
in the backs of my shirts, hieroglyphics
she left to remind me of her heartfelt
grasp, her quiet, soothing, breath.
Laundry
Fat Auntie Ursal with her coffee-breath,
baggy pink house dress, and worried
rosary beads would haul a basket of linen
to the backyard, pick clothespins out
of her mouth, and staple sheets to the line.
When it rained, I rushed to watch Auntie
panic-waddle into our backyard,
eyes wide, rosary flying, as she
pulled down the pristine sheets
as if lowering the mainsail
in a gale.
Later, she’d plead with Uncle Pete
to buy a dryer, but he couldn’t hear her
over the sound he made while sucking
food bits out of the crevasses between his
teeth—a sound so constant and irritating
that it camouflaged his life-long
devotion to penny-pinching.
Uncle Pete worked at Wallick and Volk Realty
in Cheyenne. Wallick and Volk sounded,
to my four-year-old ears, like Walikenvolk—
one word. I became further confused
by my idea that Uncle Pete was, in secret,
a car salesman selling Volkswagens
for the Walikenvolkswagen company.
In those days, when uncle and aunt lived
in our basement, I was as clean and carefree
as those linens on the line, as innocent
as the wind that blew them dry in Wyoming,
and surely unworthy of all the rosaries
fat Auntie said for me.
Hackney
Oh the worn cliché of the drunken
American poet.
Such a romantic visage—
lectern, notebook of poems,
fifth of Jack Daniels,
the flailing of arms,
words carefully slurred,
shirt wrinkled,
pants rumpled—
until, of course, he, a yellow man,
lies between hospital sheets
bathed in his own shit and piss,
crying for his mother,
while his swollen liver
rams against his abdomen
and screams
Let me out of this poisoned bog,
this soppy fool’s corpse!
The Galway Review 