Lessons in Syntax
Rain poured from a cloudless sky
watering everyone’s confusion.
People blossomed into babies
wearing three-piece suits
and having bank accounts.
It was a peculiar balance
but by the second week,
no one noticed the oddity of infants
owning summer houses in the Arctic.
Loud criers in the gardens,
they marked the beauty of peonies
shriveling back into buds and
sucked down their stems like good scotch.
Carts were cars and horses engines,
hooked by cables to the back bumper.
Someday soon, they’ll photograph
their futures, store them in albums,
records to remind them how to dream
when the sun comes up and swallows their eyes.
Michael T. Young’s third full-length collection, The Infinite Doctrine of Water, was longlisted for the Julie Suk Award. His previous collections are The Beautiful Moment of Being Lost and Transcriptions of Daylight. He received a Fellowship from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts. His chapbook, Living in the Counterpoint, received the Jean Pedrick Chapbook Award. His poetry has been featured on Verse Daily and The Writer’s Almanac. It has also appeared or is forthcoming in numerous journals including Atticus Review, Gargoyle Magazine, One, Rattle, and Valparaiso Poetry Review.
