DO YOU REMEMBER YOUR PARENTS
Geese, which remind me of rain. The operation
of clouds as a storm stuffed in the medicine cabinet
approaches. I can’t drag your eyes out
from their sunken ships. But the urge is overwhelming.
Which remind me of flying to Paris. A swollen
child. A good soldier. Out drinking so he had to be quick.
Your cheekbones, my stomach ache. The bathroom
door had no lock. Strewn through comb teeth,
old hairs which remind me of snooping. The swooping
waist of his jeans. A large barcode on his back.
Wearing long robes and trembling like canes. A city
of ultra fine mist. I can only do so much flying to Paris.
NOTES FROM BEECHWOOD CEMETERY, APRIL 2017
1. The sound of Prozac spilling on a nightstand
2. The luxury of dying a kind of death before the big one
3. Like cutting red ribbon
4. How the addicts will never step out from their graves
5. & return to their mothers
6. & you say, addicted to what
7. This unusual thing, the present
8. A specific absence
9. Unanswerable
10. How these new plots are all designed to be flexible
11. How some places are alive & will be forever
12. By now he’s hairless
13. Slick with virus
14. A donation bin hanging from the chainlink
15. Ducks calling out
James Kelly Quigley is an MFA candidate at New York University whose poetry has been published in Minetta Review, West 10th, The American Journal of Poetry, Booth, Palaver and other literary journals. He currently serves as assistant web editor of Washington Square Review. He was born and raised in New York, and is now living in Brooklyn.