Thirteen Trios

[September 2023.]

[Selections from Mike Silverton’s Trios, 169 three-line poems crafted in “irreversible tercets in lines of diminishing length,” published in 2022, by Sagging Meniscus Press (www.saggingmeniscus.com). Mike founded La Folia and has since retreated into obscurity.]

XXI

Guillaume Apollinaire, Guillaume de Machaut, Billy the Kid,
William B. Williams, utility
bill.

LVIII

Lady Murasaki pitches cherry-blossom pies
at narcoleptic ronin striking
yam-like poses.

LIX

Pensées, permafrost, walnuts.
Aim nozzle at sky and
squeeze.

LXIX

Dogs acquire ticks by chance. As for me,
I’m flying to Capri by way of
trebuchet.

LXX

I’m prepared to discuss unintelligibility as soon as
you tell me why your eyeballs
do that thing.

C

Acquiring trees to learn their ways devolves to bonsai
and permanent drought. A green thumb
requires medical attention.

CI

Mercurial, marmoreal, rigorous, frivolous, a poem
should smell like your favorite
restaurant.

CII

In a front-row seat, in garments of my own design, I monitor debris.
A recent near-miss, an ingenue’s jaw bone,
fills me with hope.

CXLI

As the poet achieves full viscosity, his sunrise fontanelles call to mind
the music of gummy machinery. A salute, when appropriate,
to recipes for bicycle cheese.

CLXV

I’d like this poem to sound like an andiron clopping an evasive tortoise.
When the poem bares its teeth the cooperative reader
should envision headstones.

CXLVI

The night stores its softer weapons under a carpet. The planets stand, as if arranged,
like mama’s little almonds, one moment beautiful,
the next, much the same.

CLXVIII

Pastel highlights flicker, suitors gurgle endearments,
fermentation bubbles vert
ically.