Noah Falck is the author of Snowmen Losing Weight (BatCat Press, 2012), and several chapbooks including Celebrity Dream Poems (Poor Claudia, 2013) &Life As A Crossword Puzzle (Open Thread, 2009). Recent work has appeared or will appear in Colorado Review, Denver Quarterly, Harvard Review, &Poets.org. He lives in Buffalo, NY, where he works as education director at Just Buffalo Literary Center. noahfalck.org
2 poems by Noah Falck
🐴
for Brian & Gregg
There aren’t words
yet invented to say
what I want to say.
I want to say something
like how the inside of a baseball
feels when it punches a batter
hard in the thigh as a form
of respect. Something like
wine in the mouth, on the teeth
at a party where everyone
is a child again
playing with matches,
with fireworks
inside all their mouths.
Or rather something like
the face of a horse
burned into the mind
so when you close your eyes
at night you become
a memorial of beauty,
a memorial to whatever
happens next.
MOUTHFULS OF NIAGARA
The tautness of a rope
holds together old friends,
continents, the world. Mist
kisses tourists in a summer
of blondes and brunettes,
a summer of war on war.
All the foreign sounds
become tiny abstract paintings
in a child’s notebook.
No one is going to hell.
Everything is fine
and out of season
(so to speak). The Falls
rush by as if to say
we are always a work
in progress, a joyful deterioration.
Mist kisses tourists evenly
under a closed sky
we mark these words.