How to Remember Love
A holy mixture of feral juice and exquisite bamboozlement.
Or a surprise recess from the humdrum. Some breezy whirl
of pluck that unabashedly spills from your pocket. Letting it.
Like a trail of coins for the taking—you can’t imagine ever
needing something as mundane as money again. And if you do,
extortion suddenly seems like an easy solution. Yes, it’s a bit
of a dirty script. But it’s a script that features you (for once)
as the main character. A character sure to bend ballerina-like
with the plot twists, twists bound to be more like flourishes
than bumps. It’s an abandoned warehouse window you shatter
on a dumb dare, the remaining shards catching the moonlight
in a way that justifies throwing the brick. Or it’s a baby’s first
word, cooed in a chord you’ve never heard. Still it’s old, basic
as pie. You tell everyone you found an entirely new filling.
Sure, it may be poisonous but aren’t there worse ways to go.
*
Michael Montlack is author of three poetry collections—most recently, Cosmic Idiot (Saturnalia)—and editor of the Lambda Finalist essay anthology My Diva: 65 Gay Men on the Women Who Inspire Them (University of Wisconsin Press). His work has appeared in Poetry Daily, Poem-a-Day, Prairie Schooner, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Painted Bride Quarterly, and other journals. This year he was awarded a residency at MacDowell. He lives in NYC and teaches poetry workshops at NYU and CUNY City College.
