Poetry By Glen Armstrong

Glen Armstrong edits a poetry journal called Cruel Garters and has three recent chapbooks: Set List (Bitchin Kitsch,) In Stone and The Most Awkward Silence of All (both Cruel Garters Press.)


The Woman with a Thousand Heads #14


It's like drinking gin 
that drinks you back.
She says your name 
and it glistens, still moist

from being reborn in her mouth.
It’s like being startled
by a silence that’s always been
there instead of a sudden

loud noise and jumping
into each others arms,
but your arms are now the same
arms in the manner that a Mobius 

strip turns two surfaces 
that never meet into a single path.

Poet Glen Armstrong

Slash for the Lowlands #8


Mars is now a little closer.
The bubbles that you blew never
popped, and I took Hell for that,

your breath like a floral grenade.
It was as if I’d used the word “she-goat”
repeatedly or replaced

the term with a number of lexemes
that all wore the cruddiest of plastic
Halloween masks, their DayGlo colors

barely designed, their elastic bands
detached to either the left or right.
It was as if I’d done all of this

to defame you and our relationship.
I see now that bubbles take breath hostage,
and words shamelessly beg for sweets.
     •

Depending on the season, what is most important may not be most relevant. The reveal would have us believe, but belief is a commitment, revelation a rarer animal, a more complex threat.



On Time


Please be on the superficial. 
Please be on the fashionable. 
Please be on the waterfall.
Please shut the door.

Please be on the public road.
Please be on the head
of a politician.
(Not our leader but that other one,
the one who causes trouble
on the nightly broadcasts.)

If you need to be on Jessica,
please use something.
Enough is enough already.

Grandmother feeds the birds.

Please be on the surface.
In the varnish.
Reflecting.

I swear I have a mind
to celebrate,

but please be on the mindful.
Please be on the hour.