Alan Britt

All the Time

The acid is sweet;
the acid is sick—
dancing with the queen of New York City.

Dancing with a lady
in pigeon shit vest—
dancing with the scorpion of New York City.

Ascending the pits of mythology,
she floats like a belladonna angel hell-bent
to canonize reality.

I attest.

But fate soon pulls her lottery number
from millions, trillions—she doesn’t know
when she’s been beaten—ugly scam
of this 21st or any century scam that will
be filleted at the next Owasco summit—
on that you can bank your retirement
subject for recalculation any day now.  

Cold Shot

Just imagine two paradoxical love birds
perched upon a hope & a prayer, love
birds fluttering like magnesium filaments
about to receive a bolt of blue electricity.

 

Alan Britt has been nominated for the 2021 International Janus Pannonius Prize awarded by the Hungarian Centre of PEN International for excellence in poetry from any part of the world. Previous nominated recipients include Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Charles Bernstein and Yves Bonnefoy. He has published 18 books of poetry and served as Art Agent for the late great Ultra Violet while often reading poetry at her Chelsea, New York studio. A graduate of the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University he currently teaches English/Creative Writing at Towson University.