Selections from The Life of the Party Is Harder to Find Until You're the Last One Around by Adrian Sobol
The New Cosmos
When the earth stops its spin
& hurls us from its cities
I could see us together
shoveled through the new cosmos
the new cosmos would look handsome on you
that emptiness would look good on anyone
the way most vacant expressions do
if only Elton wrote
songs for these occasions
I’d run up the volume
let it curdle yr hearing
see where that left us
I’m thinking Ottawa
but that’s purely coincidental
we could live out our last days
in a motel room
dress in so many layers
we aren’t able to move
the sun’ll burn out one day
I don’t want to be cold
it’s been exhausting I mean
expensive I mean I love you but
until someone offers me yr photograph
how will I know the difference
between what I’ve kept
& what I haven’t discarded
Garbage Poetry
I like garbage poetry
I like flycrusted offal poetry
I like dead, stuffed & waterlogged poetry
I like garbage poetry for its plastic bags
I like garbage poetry for its rotten fruit
its heels of stale bread
its rancid chicken not good enough to eat
as pink & gray as 23rd Avenue
in July alive with kids
on their bikes at our backs screaming
I like garbage poetry
dripping as it leaves on the way out the door
ready to perch
naked on curbs
asleep slumping in the sun
on beaches & branches
& around the mouths of fish
inside a carcass
picked open by hungry gulls
I like garbage poetry
I like how it lingers
& says nothing
I like the earnest decay
of a rat-king thought
the grislted mass
of our undone lines
I like garbage poetry
for that matter
I like garbage men
I like garbage poetry for the same reason
I love garbage men
who lift me out the trash & toss me
into a larger pile of trash
garbage men will come over once a week
garbage men will thrust me into the earth
forgotten, compacted
the only evidence of us remains
what we leave behind
sacked into a landfill in Illinois
where each winter the fat snows cover us
where each winter the teens go snowboarding
where each winter the teens go snowboarding until
one falls over & then another
& another
& another
& another hard enough
to slip a bone
through skin
through muscle
through blood we point to
wiped across the powder
like some whisper
we overheard & passed on
they tell us go home
they tell us the park is closed
we finish our beer in the car
pour the dregs out to bless
those ghosts who still chatter on about our boots
Self-Portrait (After Buying a Top Chef 5-Piece Knife Set)
Found in last night’s quiet I was excited. I thought I finally heard my inner voice for the first time, or maybe Spicer whispering a poem on horseback from within. It was just my neighbors arguing. Dear neighbors, the wall isn’t thick enough. Should we discuss it over dinner? I like my food thick enough so I feel it crack over the lull behind my eyes. I can’t sit in silence without an encroach of panic or at least irony. I sleep at bare minimum to two sources of white noise. I buy things to put myself at a distance from myself & I like my things in multitudes to smother what’s left of me out of the room. I find I’m talking to myself more as a practice of intimacy than prayer. I said to Steve once I’m dead inside & Steve said to me I’m dead inside & out. At least there’s a room for improvement I can vacate for the weekend. As far as cardinal directions go, my GPS informs me backsliding’s equally legit. Okay, I’ll be honest. There is no sound in space b/c sound has nothing to pass through. That’s what terrifies me. How it can’t fit a whole planet right here in my mouth.
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Our first book of poetry and it’s a banger. The poems in Adrian’s book are unpretentious, playful, and beautiful. His brother Andrew designed the incredible cover. Malarkey Books is so honored and proud to be able to publish The Life of the Party Is Harder to Find Until You’re the Last One Around and we hope you’ll read it.