Failure

We make noises when we fail

Imagine dislodged bullets

Guttural chant

(Failure fists)

We failed together

Trains stall inside our sound

The whistle misses its steam

The eye-sick bull

Loses his red, olé!

At first, we held

Those furry stars and laughed:

A snorting kind of song

How the earth

Spun dizzy in our losing

Every hour

Suffered the faint passing

Of yes:

A little egg in a yellow nest

Called sun

How it all slipped

And we yelped

How we all held on

Cooing odd, original scales

Pianos, pears, peeling

Struck the surgeons

With suspicion

Even the stone skips

An extra beat these days

The ripple of waves:

Our only winning.

**

Amanda Leigh Lichtenstein writes poetry and creative nonfiction. Her poems appear in Contrary, La Petite Zine, In Posse Review, Painted Bride Quarterly, Another Chicago Magazine, among others. Essays on teaching poetry to children appear in Teaching Artist Journal and Teachers and Writers Magazine. She is a recent graduate of the Harvard School of Education and recipient of the 2006 Vermont Studio Centers poetry fellowship. She currently lives in Chicago, IL.

Archived at http://lit.konundrum.com/poetry/lichtensteinal_poems.htm