“Sound Reverberated Off of Mountains” by Brice Maiurro
I swallowed the city
before the city could swallow me.
In anticipation of the haunted smog
which rolls along like mustangs
into the last solid chamber of my America.
I watched a dream die.
A dream of big thoughts
like lightning bolts,
large and unsustainable,
filling the last pixelated square of
unlit wanderlust.
And in the unlit wanderlust
I learned to walk by sound.
I learned to move
by the layered truths of reality
and I learned to love
what I have not yet seen
but that which I truly believe
exists.
I swallowed the city
inward like two aspirin tablets
past the vacuum of the spaces
between my sweet teeth
onward in rivers to the pit of me.
I felt the brick walls falling
in the canyons of me
like sixty-seven thousand soup cans falling down
endless flights of stairs.
And inside of me there are
endless flights of stairs and
each day I ask myself if I am
going to walk downward into
them or if I am going to climb
up them and on a planet where
north is our best guess I won’t
know if I’m heading south,
but only that these stairs just
keep unfolding.
The city attempted to swallow
me in its placebo fever of death
and I yelled deep, deep into the
belly of the city as to make it
bounce back against the
mountains in hopes of
disorienting the city that I loved
into possibly thinking it was and is
hearing the voice of God.
Because we all are and I can’t
argue with you about that of which
I am certain. That my God is a
God of sound reverberating off
mountains and I push it right
back against it until I hear a
full-mantled chorus of every
fire and every flood in my
wet, hot life.
I think about the way that we
give birth is in every way. I think
about the way we father our
poems and days and then we
let them go.
I drown in sweaty, undying brows
of om dripping with the hard work
of a soul in its best sunlight.
I still plant seeds for later.
I swallowed the city and
from my belly the city grew.
It grew because
I fed it in the belly of me.
I still plant seeds for later.
For the day the ocean grows
sick of our bee sting and swats
back at us.
I plant seeds for when this world
is sick of shooting at itself.
For dreams that I dare say already
exist because I was there in them
and you and you and you were there.
About Brice Maiurro
He/Him/His
Brice Maiurro is a poet from Earth. He is the author of Stupid Flowers and Hero Victim Villain. His poetry has been featured by The Denver Post, Tilt West, Boulder Weekly, Suspect Press and Birdy Magazine. He is the Founding Editor of South Broadway Press. In 2019, Westword Magazine recognized him as a Colorado Creative for his contributions to the Colorado Arts Community. You can find more about him at www.maiurro.co.
Photo courtesy of J. Mark Tebben (@jmarktebben)