Michael McSweeney is a junior-year English student at the University of Massachusetts. He is fond of photos wherein cats are adorable. A blog concerning him/things relating to him can be found at: http://macsubhine.blogspot.com.

Three Poems

i <3 u: two pieces

Japanese Stock Trader

Lights Down

Three Poems (March 20, 2011. Issue 26. The SLAM & FLASH Issue!)

Baseball in Tiredtown

Across from a bustling gas station
just before the interstate highway
I watch a baseball diamond sag
beneath the footsteps of shouting 
floodlights and young players in worn shoes.
In the bleachers, ring-locked fingers pull away
from cold and sweaty palms like leaves 
from trees in quick-maturing autumns. 
They drift to find popcorn,  other clusters 
of stainless steel lawn-chairs.
Meanwhile others sit and smoke 
while their toddlers tug at the hems 
of jeans, looking up to still-young 
cigarettes, cell phones opened 
in succession, the passage of wandering 
eyes. Everyone is nursing styrofoam coffee
through this six-inning game.

Just behind the home-base fence
a mother bulging through faded jeans
tugs at some red strands that haven't been lost
to a slowly-spreading ash.
Her eyes acknowledge her husband's isolate hand
and shuttered lips. Her face says 
she's too tired to begin any conversation,
not even later on with a stalling engine
that argues with itself in echoes
through an emptying parking lot.

After the game is over I loiter 
by the Tiredtown Community Store
as its business swells like an urgent vein 
after the game. Here, anyone can catch 
wild-tossed statements of what and who
while a dozen plastic straws twist
ice cubes to slush. Collared shirts 
reach for their wives and keys, 
press buttons to unlock their cars
and walk away from the darkening diamond.
The floodlights go silent, one by one.

The Poet Addresses the Orchestra He Conducts

My friends, I think the highest
of your tuxedos, your silver-slice cufflinks
like perfect teeth grinning beside bowstrings;
or your night-lace dresses, quiet jewelry
shining with the movement of polished oak 
or violent brass; ladies and gentlemen,
I love you like a poet loves his inspiration.

I love your passionate days,
the orchestra pit churning the floorboards,
flinging dust-clumps from rafters and backdoors.

I love your quiet days,
the sections in thoughtful practice,
low string-strikes, 
tongues that only linger on the reed.

I love that you came from darkening cities 
and quiet universities, lived through 
hours of nervous pen-shocks,
burning papers on sleepless nights.

I love how each and everyone one of you are hands
that either hold books or beer cans,
but late at night, all of you howl like aging trees
and stumble like the silhouettes of retching men.

I love you so much
that some days I don't hold rehearsal.
Not for the lack of desire to rosin the older bows
or tune the piano's lazy bones.
No--I do it because one day you might have to leave

quietly, perhaps with lingering handshakes
in the form of clunky haiku, 
attempts at rhyme or Romance verse,
goodbyes that accumulate like the thought of bills,
richer pockets and car insurance.

I fear this day--and because I do,
I never make you come to rehearsal.
I just wait in the practice room,
bury blank pages in mindless black ink,

until someone arrives without telling me,
picks up the sheet music,
and sings with their eyes on my face.

You and I Will Drink Coffee Together

Before we order I'll take our iPods,
disembowel their tones, 
and send them scatter-shot around the café
so I can speak with you honestly
as our cups stop steaming.
As we wait we can contemplate
a multi-colored pastiche painting
the owner hung above our table.
As we finish the first cups 
I'll entwine my hands and hope 
you see that poetic gestures are not lunges
to seize the napkins and our cell phones,
and that you'll understand when I speak too fast
gingerly lifting the pearls from inside 
a sugar packet and gather them into a neat pile.
It is then that I'll show you the taste buds on your tongue
that have the power to paralyze your entire body.
Then I'll show you the holes in my teeth.

You'll stand up first; neither of us will know
exactly how or why we emptied cup after cup after cup,
but we'll know that we agreed
that truly great coffee can only be defined by the drinker.

The drinker may choose a deep, black ocean
churned by an undersea current 
as bitter as an old cat, you'll say as we walk outside.

The drinker may choose to paint a portrait 
of mocha, cinnamon, and chocolate,
I'll reply, slipping my sunglasses on.
Hell, the drinker may even want to slap 
whipped cream on top.

You'll fish in your pockets for quarters
to sacrifice for the day's news,
and though I won't tell you this
I'll fight the desire to help you open the pages
as you cross the street without saying goodbye.
People just want to relish 
what they pour down their throats!
you'll shout without turning.

Table of Contents

i <3 u: two pieces (May 20, 2009. Issue 5.)

I. 1609

London: a quagmire of veins and mud.
Wenches smooch the bricks;
everyone is drunk in the dark age.
Inside the grimy pages of a tiny apartment 
a calm bard chewing dirty nails composes
what he believes is timeless ink, 
quill romances.

II. 2009

College dorm room: students French kiss 
plus-sized wine bottles
while a failed poet belabors
his lost love's text message.
Finger sweat and emotion
will drift across the electronic sea 
tonight. Manic digits conduct
the flip-phone concertino.

Japanese Stock Trader (March 26, 2009. New Moon. Issue 2)

"We don't want you--"
the digital mountainside roars,
erupts, magma flowing downward
towards the village market

and you sob in your collar
your mind clutching rocks, panting, 
soaked because we don't want 
you. 

A noisy insect buzzes, glows inside your pocket, 
angry electric warnings: your bank account 
stings. Below drones run with numbers
panicking; the scent is lost, the scent is loss.
"It doesn't want us" says an old merchant
wheezing paper slips. You want to leave quickly.

Back inside your office, the insect falls asleep.
You snuggle under your jacket
afraid.

Your penthouse, night;
the silk sheets snuggle against your back,
holding your face towards the wall,
You feel wanted. "Tomorrow, there will be chanting."
You rise, move to the window, disrobe, open

bask in the the light of streets that aren't filled with chanting
yet.

Lights Down (March 5. Issue 1)

Life exists elsewhere. It's Friday night 
   after all. The greatest love story ever told. Live. 
   I love good theater; 
   the way it 
   grabs you 
   but then adjusts your collar and urges: "sir" 
   like you're lost, drunk with ideas. 
   Third act: she's screaming at two eyes
   eating at an ass barely concealed by pink fabric. 
   He pivots, looks into the mirror dressed in baggy jeans 
   smoking a cigarette in the cold-- 

--lights down. 
   I'm a street away, never to know the ending;
   it's rude to stare too long anyways. 

Children wearing adult costumes dancing on the sidewalk, 
   clutching red plastic cups because
   they want to tell young people
   they're the best four years of your life. 
   I grab one (five bucks if you're a guy) 
   slip inside the nearest frat house. 
   Bodies shout and drown. 
   Fur boots, credit card laces 
   pulled tight, tight.
   Every girl is pretty.
   Everyone is the actor and the chorus.
   Ping pong balls echo in the stairwell; 
   business majors crawl on the floors, 
   clicking briefcases filled with cheap beer,
   failed English assignments yet still they
   win the drinking games. I lose, 
   piss in the driveway and watch suited men steer 
   SUV's filled with outrageous numbers 
   towards some town called Washington D.C. 
   "What financial crisis?" a popped collar 
   curses, lurches in the bushes. 
   --the sun is coming. 
   Lights down across town for all the players, 
   stumbling over their lines
   slumped against the front steps.
   All the theaters are silent.

Someone coughs up repressive pills 
   and we all laugh, migrate to the sewer drain. 
   I think about the unfinished paper, 
   the momentary pink sky, 
   how things go by too fast. 

We pollute with cigars; 
   they remind us of the ones 
   we bought in high school.