The Grave of the Great Alley of Clarity Cats is an anthology of poetry written by Mike Giardina, originally prepared as a thesis in creative writing, at the University of California, Davis. Please enjoy these experiments in abstract, postmodern poetry.
 

Chocolate Italian Princess

I wish we would stop giving into kindergarten urges,
my scarce little $2.00 daughter, my photogenic Monday,
my freak car-seat accident that smiled at me.

You are the remnants of the suspended, my hours in bloom.
You are an injured crash, a breath of being bound in butter,
scooped up in handfuls of fine wine simmering in little finger shot glasses

You have the soft infertility of baby animals,
always wanting to be immersed in father,
clumsily sure of the frenzy that makes you weak.

For weeks, we assimilated every particle of each other into
body language and fell into the garden.

You loved my all-morning efforts, where
your treasures were lost in my lonely adult wanderings,
my snapshots, and my distinct elderly
October blessings of the never-well-enough.

Being one who has never heard of unfiltered glances,
I am content with you as ruins, a baron piece of land.

I would cut myself a bridge across every book
to come to your modest set of acres, to the
solitary ecstasy of you as us and everywhere.

Yet roughness was urged. You, dear, wanted me withdrawn,
wanted me hurt by your hair, strangled while conducting you—
my replica, my open mouth, my generally-ready evening everything.

 
This poem originally appeared in The Grave of the Great Alley of Clarity Cats, an anthology of poetry written by Mike Giardina. The complete the anthology is available below:

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