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.
 

Running far away from a city, to return a week later.

It begins at the front door jigsaw peppermint puzzle,
where eyes are the black marble bustle and everyone is
full of strawberry ice cream and hot, hot, hot dogs.
Your mother and I were just traveling with the flock,
like fireflies in love with electric lights,
compelled towards sticky, sticky, sticky, letters.
On vacation, trees were colorful, flexible, blind.
It was so subtle that it drew cold tears.

Downstairs I was peeling scabs in bed,
beating monarch butterflies to the wilderness
of old oil barges off the coast.

We are carefree, son—daughter.
You’ve learned it yourselves,
learned to build up until you are soaring,
learned to speak out before the scream of the shrink,
learned to build bits until your psychologists
just reduce… reduce to rubble, rubble, rubble.

 
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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