Two Poems by John Amen

Hide & Seek

I was the golden boy. I bolted for the woods, running through ferns, past the sycamores, hiding behind the well-shed. The birthday song faded, my parents boarded their boat, leaving for a new life across the ocean. When I emerged, I was no longer the golden boy & my friend, who was supposed to be looking for me, had given up, married, he had children, grandchildren, houses scattered across the globe. Our lawn had turned brown, the roof was heavy with moss, our driveway littered with mannequins & car parts. I watched the Uber driver as he hauled the roast into the cul de sac. I stabbed it with my Swiss army knife until it stopped howling. That red juice flowed across the pavement, neighborhood, the county. I waited for the moon to appear, but no one was working the strings, at least that day, & like a train that’s leapt its rails, the night just never arrived.

*

FMJ

It happened again by the diamond highway. A satyr wearing a Budweiser cap put a bullet through a windshield & disappeared into the sunlight. Police arrived, dogs sniffed the tarmac, detectives found a casing with an inscription that read love is salvation. The highway was barricaded, cars & trucks backed up to the Standalone Gulf. Someone said, we’re in a loop here & smiled a terrifying smile. The day of the funeral in Chicago / in Manhattan / in Omaha a million people flooded a Zoom call, chanting until the FBI wrapped a trailer in Musgrove, a kidnapped baby sobbing on the back porch. The satyr in the Budweiser cap sang “Amazing Grace” through a bullhorn, then turned himself in. At the trial, he waved his beautiful hooves, declaring he’d heard voices in the forsythia, his angels ordering him to spread the holy word. An hour later the judge lowered his gavel, a long sigh unrolled through the city. The satyr’s hind legs were chained, his horns pared to a nub. A bailiff dragged him from the courtroom, mane shimmering, teeth bared for the folks back home. Someone said that night & that night only, they could see every star in the universe.

*

John Amen is the author of five collections of poetry, including Illusion of an Overwhelm, finalist for the 2018 Brockman-Campbell Award, and work from which was chosen as a finalist for the 2018 Dana Award. He was the recipient of the 2021 Jack Grapes Poetry Prize and the 2024 Susan Laughter Myers Fellowship. His poems and prose have appeared recently in Rattle, Prairie Schooner, American Literary Review, and Tupelo Quarterly, and his poetry has been translated into Spanish, French, Hungarian, Korean, and Hebrew. He founded and is managing editor of Pedestal Magazine. His new collection, Dark Souvenirs, was released by NYQ Books in May 2024.