JOE ALBANESE - POEMS

Joe Albanese is a writer from New Jersey. His poetry can be found in recent or forthcoming issues of Chronogram, Evening Street Review, Poetry Salzburg Review, The Projectionist's Playground, Straylight Magazine, and other publications. Joe's novel Caina (Mockingbird Lane Press) and his novella Smash and Grab (Books to Go Now) were both published in 2018.

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​Passerby and By

​She inhales from the east coast and
exhales smoke to the west
If this ghost should find her, she’ll
simply let it float away
 
He’s a masochistic preacher, attempting
to find meaning in nonsense
Always trying to hold on to what
already flowed away
 
They’re sleeping on tracks with the
train in sight, just unsure which
direction it travels
Feeling its rattle is proof of life
 
A palm face-up twitches closed with a single
drop of rain — how much can it hold? We
lose more with a tight squeeze, and always
drown in what first stirred us alive
 
The winds of treason brought them
here, now each blow is a pull
apart. There is no need to force, they let
it float away
 
The train rattles where it comes from,
to. He inhales her trail of smoke from a
passenger’s cracked window, but
long ago knew they already flowed away.
 
 

Dream Girl
​

​I die in there
when we’re
in the same place at
the same time
 
and always dreams apart
 
so in vain, like
A Nightmare on Elm Street
I’ll try
to never fall asleep
 
because you kill me there
 
not with
bladed fingers or blatant
irony, but
 
with your
original form and clever
indifference
 
with my weighted steps
that
never catch up to
your dancing
 
with the way your
panorama
catches every detail
of that world
while skipping right
over me
 
you’re the ghost I always feel,
the ghost I can’t quite touch
 
so I pluck you
from there, not because
I need to
destroy you
 
but so you’ll know
 
I’ll let you kill me here too.
 
 

The Shards of Blanket Comfort
​

​I’ve seen the girl I wish I’d marry,
but test a dream, I’d never dare
 
Hope comes in waves of good intention
then blasts and scatters in the air
 
Moments stumble no matter how rehearsed,
            inside out-of-reach,
all fate’s coerced
The things we want the most are just too rare
 
I hold the hand of muddled vision
to see how something sentient compares
 
Hope comforts dreams in clouded poison
that leaves them choking on fresh air
 
Through loss it comes with golden curse,
brings lucid storms,
            the clearer verse
To heal is just to dance with disrepair.
 
 
 
 
 

​Childish Games
 

​I’ve been playing
that “someday
it’ll be
worth it” game
too much lately
 
the same game I
played
fifteen years ago when I thought by
today I’d be
ten solid years into
happily
ever after
 
the same game I played
ten years ago,
before
another this time turned
into another next time
 
it’s the same game I
played
five years ago, the one one that
filtered out the
unabashed
from shame
 
but it’s lost something
this time around --
those false connections in
displacement,
and grey hair is no longer
scattered
 
doors move on, windows
only let
in the cold
 
and even I struggle
to find those
strands
of
someday
 
because
I know
one day that someday
won’t
 
be there.
 
 
 

Sail in Storm
​

it’s not that we
don’t see
 
the beauty
in the world
 
we see it all
we see more than most
 
what destroys us
is that we know
 
the distance
between
 
and with each attempt
to get close to the beauty
 
that distance only
becomes clearer
 
we know we’ll
never reach it.


​