Three Poems by John Findura

“Nineteen Minutes Ago”

This morning I am here
Nineteen minutes ago we might have met
But we missed each other, somehow
It is raining very hard but there is no thunder
Where there is no thunder there are few thoughts of you
Instead in their place is a stop-motion film
Of wooden hands playing the piano
Think of that – those wooden fingers on those ivory keys
Pictures of a famous actor with a bad haircut
An actress playing three roles in the same film
None of them are stop-motion like the wooden hands
I read a book about volcanoes 
And the insistence of lava over everything else last night
And as you know if it didn’t happen there it doesn’t happen here
Or maybe the reverse, by now
It happens somewhere where I have such joy in my heart
So much it guides my wooden fingers over the keys
As if I am in the film now
As if the camera could possibly capture me
_______
_______

“The Last Straw”

My dog is downstairs
laying on the floor, dying

next to her water bowl
with her head on a pillow

We took the kids to a zoo
today and fed a giraffe

I am now upstairs, laying
in my bed next to a tower

of books, with a damaged liver
I too am dying, but slower

She stopped eating, my dog,
days ago and looks at us

with the hopeful expression
of a dog who knows she’s a good dog

Like she’s saying it’s okay
it’s okay, I’m just not hungry anymore

My liver is diseased but I
can’t feel it, I can’t even tell

My doctor and the vet looked
at me in the same sad way

saying this is the last straw
I thought there’d be more straws

for both of us, but there’s nothing
left to drink, I guess and I don’t

even know how I got here anymore
_______
_______

“I Shake Like an Apple”

Yellow powdered mouth, _______again

_______A holy something

Already devoured

Already in my mouth

_______
A pill dissolved under my tongue

Smeared residue on my lips

This holy something _______on my lips, again

_______
I taste like devour

Shake like an apple

_______
Oh holy something, my mouth again

Calm me like you do

Make me familiar

Do something with my core

_______
I run my hands over my face and think of something

All things at the same time

My yellow powdered mouth forms words

You do not hear _______that I’m not sure I spoke
_______

Stop but don’t stop

*

John Findura is the author of the poetry collection Submerged (Five Oaks Press, 2017). He holds an MFA in Poetry from The New School, an M.Ed in Professional Counseling, and is currently a doctoral student studying Educational Technology Leadership at New Jersey City University. His poetry and criticism appear in numerous journals including Verse; Fourteen Hills; Copper Nickel; Pleiades; Forklift, Ohio; Sixth Finch; Prelude; and Rain Taxi. A guest blogger for The Best American Poetry, he lives in Northern New Jersey with his wife and daughters.

© LIT Magazine Issue #33, 2019