Three Poems

by Steven Rineer

“I think if we had to pinpoint a specific day…this is the day when he started losing his mind”

i started getting hyper-minded
when this lady was reading a
horrible poem at my parent’s bbq
& i forget what it was about
something like a dead brother
or cat but it just rhymed and was
shitty (not cause it rhymed) but
everybody clapped & then they were
saying, “hey that was a good poem,
steven, yeah?” & then i was just
in a daze, looking at the flowers &
the colors were exploding in my ears
& then i was thinking how i O
wanted to cum on my wife’s face,
this speaker isn’t me & that
never happened it’s a poem

This suit’s not even supposed to get a little wet

There are catholic
clouds in
the ground-
water — they//
are — as cars go by —
splashing my
knee, that high: that’s
lowest sky —

the white of them hangs
on holiest wires you see
see it all just stops now O!//
picture me, my
wet silver
sidewalk making
this happen for you, for you/
I don’t speak of the
grey ash

Singular Absences

Plant placebos in the bathmat. Ergot in your pocket. Ease up shelf and O Dan! Flee please. You’re an anagram – in one way or another. Watch the sky for drones, dinosaurs. Wear a tiny hat; you’ve a large head. Go — at least once — on the lamb. That’s not the word you meant. How would you know? I’m speaking. You are indecipherable among the weeds. Pull trees. The ground spits out animals; all is a-fucking tumbling. I love you and your gurgling. This ejaculate of letters. Let us make a mess of the walls. Not all tickled things are pink. There are many things I will never know. We will never see the tops of stars; we turn too slow and they are too far. I don’t wish to argue with you. Give me a light.

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Steven Rineer works for an asphalt construction company in southern California.  He went to school in San Francisco and then later at LMU because he likes to read and write and think.  He is currently writing poems and working on stories of various lengths.  Steven twice attended The Ashbery Home school in Hudson, New York and got to write poems and work with good poets.  He wonders if it’s supposed to feel this fucking weird writing about himself using “he” and “Steven.”  Yeah, yeah he knows….he just didn’t feel like using the phrase “in the third person.”   Steven has been published in LA Miscellany, Transfer and the Newer York.  He has a wife and zero kids, because he likes to do what he wants to do without kids ruining his life.  He apologizes to any future kids if he ends up having any.  I don’t think he should.  It’s his life though.