Benjamin Niespodziany: THREE COLLAPSED CATHEDRALS

Enough of the Boiling

A court-ordered Manhattan left stranded in the aisle.
She dialed wrong and spawned God.
She drummed her old husband with a fresh baguette.
It's a blessing, she said, to treat an elevator like a cage.
She once bought pounds of down comforters on her way home from the zoo.
A glorious downpour, she wrote in her tome.
It occurred like a curtain.
What do you plan on doing? she asked gas cans.
The van waited in the parking lot, its key sleeping.
Enough of the boiling.
She dabbed her chin and grinned.
With her affairs in order, she ordered more boredom.
Classified files lined her tub.
She flipped through them with her toe.
Precision is reflective of wisdom, she said to her cat.
Her cat, that was eating a dove.

An Open Letter to My Seaplane Stranger

Why is every stranger
a seaplane? Why doesn't
every plane have legs?

The world will soon
be all water or
all dust

and it hurts
to think
of sinking wings.

The town atop
the hill sings
in guttural Russian.

The region
deems it holy,
to shoot crows

from rooftops
and solve the crisis
of gawking.

Swollen, each crow
is hollowed, plastered
in the taxidermy tavern

where off-duty armed
guards play a
game with a bucket

of water and a cup
of beer. Will it sink
or will it float?

The hope all along
is that we
live forever.

Ogling the Olive Branch

Often awkward
like aardvark arms,
the tired scientist eats
limes like apples.
Consumes soup
with a fork. Locals
named the nearby river
River because it was
the only river around.
Now there are many
rivers but only one River River.
The tired scientist can't
stress that enough.

Benjamin Niespodziany has had work published in Fairy Tale Review, Hobart, Paper Darts, and various others. He works in a library in Chicago and runs the multimedia art blog [neonpajamas].