Eric Swedberg

Morphemes

What is the fit of morphemes and mouth?
The surprising hints of nothing that rhyme
A laid-back sort of ingenious niceness.

Some cooperative gang of railroad delinquents:
A slice of tomato from a hard-worked garden
’top an urban apartment file drawer,
A baseball disappearing into the deep blue of an
    August afternoon
between the traffic of mosquitoes and dandelion
    puffs,
a hooked fishing line running out after the bass
    spawn.

Here – this wine is a reserve from years ago,
the stuff they save for the last minutes of whim’s
    time,
a military of flashing experience and want
taken from European fields
put into the cheap burgundy glass,
as if it were New England slush.

Here – 	your relative pleasure,
           	your everyday splurge of memories
is the sparkling litter in a high crime area,
And the image of your wine:
the most complex idea water.

Firework

Into the ride we went,
up into air, its streets.
I remember your face on the ground
before blasting up choosy paths
ushered by the quantum mechanics of careful
    breezes.

We’ve taken numerous
upward boulevards leading to streets,
and we’ll dissolve into our dark blue beds,
alleyways distanced across the expanse of the 
    night city.

Remember like cold stars do, winking
Their first lonely memories of the ground,
The people who set them off.

Whitman & Voltaire on 
the Corner1

Finally, a void of preoccupation arose as we   
    crouched on our haunches,
adorning an invisible trite corner with 
    snickering purple shadows.
On this night, another year joined trinkets in 
    the catch-all of memory.

Green oranges eaten,
beautifully pictured books
of World War in hand,
We stared aloof, a flying machine and its path,
A sky attachment to strings that hung from nothing.

Identical snowflakes fell at dusk and dawn.
Simple covers, hats, clean, white coats of honor.

1 In his poem “Orange Blossoms by mail from Florida,” Whitman wrote of “proof of this present time, and thee, 
thy broad expanse, America.” The poem also included a 
head note regarding Voltaire’s assertion that a ship of war and the grand opera were the quintessence of our successful progression.

Eric Swedberg teaches at a small high school in Massachusetts.