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A.M. PFEFFER - POEMS

1/16/2020

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Picture
A.M. Pfeffer lives in Los Angeles, California. He is at once a devoted husband, father, and a ruthless recreational tennis player. A.M.'s work has been featured by Ariel Chart, The Good Men Project, on Medium, and his memoir OF, BY, AND FOR THE HANGED MAN was published in January 2019.

​A Primrose Fallacy

She would rather I believe any other
rather than none
Pious for the sake of gnomes
left to burn in open fields and open doorways
Venomous serums administered by hordes of madmen
Poignancy throbbing through their holsters
Inevitably tended upon by widowed nurses
endlessly aching for the ravens to caw their strain

Information on crumpled parchment
Information smothered by vast particulars
Take them where they can spin no yarns
Heed their wails and bear witness of no known mercy
Give them light,
only to snuff out their brilliance with a searing gleam

Who would she have me believe in?
If not for no one and none and nothing
I want her righteous heart more than I care to admit
Scratching that prickle for a compassionate deity
Spent on time for the sake of seeing time pass
Counting blessings in lieu of follicle enumeration

If any are listening
then I expect them to attune my bellow
For all who would also cry an octave higher
Justice for the souls who had no say
Salvation for the kindred a mile in every direction
Profit for the investors relegated to any tier but first

Now is not suggestion
Now is a reasonable demand of overlooked vassals
Courteous to a limit,
limited only by the discourteous bromides
Return the favors that were never beckoned to begin with
and offer homage for the souls earlier deemed unfit to pass
I will believe for her then as she asks of me;
any other above none at all 

​

​Widget

Fractures are rarely ever hairline
Bled from bone; bleeding out when there is depth
An assembly line is a median causation,
where the mundane begets the norm, and
attention is drawn toward details and detail is not capacious

A single contraption
Born of many
Borne across the well-worn pavement

Given enough time the contraption withers,
its function outlived by untold,
but not by all

A den formulated by a family television
A porch held true by holding hearth
A playground swing offers comfort of a thousand paternal interactions
Except when it doesn’t; made hollow when the blood has all been drained
Remaining hidden in the shadows, residing smugly in the details


​

​Spouse

My Europeanness fails to match her Europeanness
The ancestry is weaker
A lineage of no noteworthy stock

Hers roamed untethered across mountains and immense bodies of water, while
mine prayed to be kept safe from her people
O’ but then,
my head in her hands
Centuries later the structure of her face, and
the strength in her fingers demand I forget myself

I made vows to keep her safe
Promises inverted long before ever spoken

Rubbing away the worry
My head in her hands
I do all to live up to our contemporary bridge,
worrying just the same

We owe each other nothing
Derived from opposite sides of a fitful continent
divided by mountains and immense bodies of water
Roamed by Corsicans and Heathens and unpronounceable tribes
conjoined by heat and dust and slough

Promises made by two for the benefit of all who descended

Her presence keeps me still
Meant to calm
I am calm
My head in her hands
The city long ago sacked

​

To a “T”
​

Out with a false harbinger
Out with all the treason
Out with golden haze
Out with tenor

Down with muddied waters
Down with a twisted tongue
Down with insect cataclysm
Down with an imbalanced tete-a-tete

Who among us will cancel tomorrow’s tour?

Out with bloodied personnel
Down with the second Tesla
Curse this disproportionate national quilt
Fuck any emblemized golf tee

Your trust falls mandate a tourniquet 
Your tall tales now too many to tally
Go on then, bill me for your time already

​
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