The air has gone cold as a traitor’s eternal bed.

Antaeus (he being the only unchained Giant
and de facto caretaker of the Ninth Circle)

has left his windows open again, and
wing-driven winds off Cocytus are
loose in the streets, howling reveled Hell.

They bear messages to be shoved under doors,
slipped in through tiny cracks in thick glass
and resolve.

I do not know what others might read,
whether warning or warrant or
denial of appeal –

but as to what comes to me, whispered
in snow-sibilants, I will not betray myself.


Summer
writes itself in
rockabilly riffs and
termite scrawls
on a 2×2,

a loose
syncopated
thump of canvas
slip-ons tumbling
in the dryer,

the quick hiss-
pop of a nail
gun, a bird just
out of sight calling
Marco…


Steve Brisendine is a writer, poet, occasional artist and recovering journalist living in Mission, Kansas. His poetry has appeared in the third and most recent volume of the 365 Days Poets anthology, as well as in Grand Little Things and The Rye Whiskey Review. His first collection of poems, The Words We Do Not Have, is due out in spring 2021 from Spartan Press.