Two Poems

by Dan Wriggins

MAKE HAPPY ANY MAN ALIVE

If my mixtape for sunken lounges doesn’t suit you,
try my mixtape for donuts in a hearse.
The Dead show up on both.
Singing makes the world
we live in, worms in the riverbed
of whatever’s going on up there.
Expert theories are separated
by thin walls, and I can only take it
one room at a time,
like borrowing a friend’s car.
Unsettling at first, but a few miles down the road
and it’s the ur-form of car.
I maxed out my card
on fifty acres of tundra
because I forgot plains exist.
The heaviest love song of all time
still won’t feel like love,
but tell that to the burnouts in the park,
or to my guy Mike, who has to get to work,
and is borrowing my Chevy.
I may be a little stoned,
but I’d like to lay flowers around your skull,
or at least compose
a park bench dedication. Bill:
He made his people happy. Mary:
She hung out here.
Prokofiev got shafted on flowers
and if that’s not relatable, what is? Who hasn’t
sat in traffic before, been supremely useless?
Who hasn’t been a mosquito
trapped between a window and a screen,
thinking, “huh, a hollow mountain?”

STUPID AFTERWORD

for Brian Nowell

Money Money Money Money Pain Pain Pain.
An eternity no matter how many steps
you take is two steps away.
Like how you tricked us into thinking
your name was spelled with a Y. Like beer
in the microwave. Like a town in PA where
the dumbass kids listen to metalcore
and the mud freezes into mud crystals
and you look back and think God, I thought
that would set me free? Bryan, if that
really is your name, your voice is
the howl of a starving hound
in mad fast wind. A sweet remix with violin.
I’m told they’re canceling the 44.
Which reminds me of winning
a hundred bucks on a scratch-off
on the purple line. Which reminds
me of you from time to time.

Dan Wriggins is a poet and songwriter. He records and tours with the band Friendship. He lives in Philadelphia with his dog, Roy.

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