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    City of Insomnia
    City of Insomnia
    City of Insomnia
    Ebook87 pages49 minutes

    City of Insomnia

    By Victor Infante

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    About this ebook

    City of Insomnia is a book about being lost and what you find when you’re lost. Poetry that explores the landscapes of California, Pennsylvania, and Massachusetts, Infante transforms city streets, love, America’s fractured politics, and his father’s death, unearthing questions about love and loss for which there are no good answers, but near endless emotional terrain to explore.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherWrite Bloody Publishing
    Release dateAug 13, 2010
    ISBN9781935904816
    City of Insomnia
    Author

    Victor Infante

    Victor Infante grew up listening to The Clash, Elvis Costello and Talking Heads and had his poetic mind blown by Ted Walker, Ted Hughes and Patricia Smith. His poetry and journalism has appeared in periodicals internationally, including the The Los Angeles Review, Pearl, The American Journalism Review, and GotPoetry, as well as anthologies such as Poetry Slam: The Competitive Art of Performance Poetry and Spoken Word Revolution Redux. He is currently an editor at The Worcester Telegram & Gazette and editor-in-chief of The November 3rd Club, an online literary journal of political writing.

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      Book preview

      City of Insomnia - Victor Infante

      Always.

      15 Ways to Leave Your Labyrinth

      Coat your tongue with nitroglycerin. Speak softly.

      Book a vacation online. Request paper tickets. When the mailman arrives, follow him home.

      Challenge the minotaur to Texas hold ‘em, but be careful. It cheats in the final hand. Above all else, don’t lose.

      Converse with houseplants. Trust when they whisper directions to the exits. Trust they are willing to wilt for your happiness.

      Take scissors to the Bible. Re-arrange phrases until they form a map.

      Shrink small and befriend the ants. Their catacombs are just another maze, but the pay is better.

      Offer the minotaur a gold ring. It fears commitment and will run.

      The whole bread crumb thing’s played out, and string’s a mug’s game. Spray perfume at the threshold when you enter. You’ll remember freedom’s scent.

      Surrender to childhood memories of striking matches and singed hair.

      Redecorate. A fresh coat of paint makes an old labyrinth brand new, and the dust mites have conquered the sofa anyway.

      Turn to television as religion.

      Lie to your journal, creating an alternate universe where you stumble casually upon the exit. Write with enough conviction and it will become the truth.

      Come to an accord with the minotaur, but remain wistful and aloof at quiet moments. Don’t return its calls right away. It will long to see you smile and offer to show you the sky.

      Chip small slices off the walls and swallow them. Soon, you, too, will become stone.

      Remain motionless. The walls around you will become dust. Eventually.

      An American Love Song

      Somewhere, a man who voted for last year’s Pilate

      is choking down sobs between sips of good American beer.

      Johnny Cash is playing on the jukebox.

      I shot a man in Reno/Just to watch him die

      streams between the electric crackle of static.

      We find love stories in soot-stained hands,

      gaze straggled out from the stars to the mire.

      Shiny gems of souls locked in prison vaults,

      the twittering madness lashed against steel bars.

      Unwanted men falling, falling, this is ballet.

      One punch releases demons, one moment’s peace

      in the thunderclap of imploding bone.

      Some cannot survive love’s passing:

      their bodies stitched with it like sutures, hands

      always open, voices raised in praise to God

      for rough-hewn men whose coarsened labors

      keep machine gears grinding.

      The cement beneath our feet is always unraveling.

      We find grace in the strangest places,

      Eyes. Black coffee. Love stories.

      Soft hands draw us in from undertow.

      Embraces, the promise of storms subsiding.

      This is always a love story:

      One hand clasped tight in desperation,

      the other extended outward, like a gift.

      This world is rain that pounds like jackhammers,

      heads bowed down against the torrent.

      The beer is warming. Soon it will be little more

      than carbonation and bitter aftertaste.

      That Left Turn At Albuquerque

      Sing me a hymn of Travelport showers and carburetor-coated omelets; tabletop jukeboxes, Waylon Jennings for a nickel; vending machine pocket knives; communion of coffee, black as Tupac and twice as welcome when the cauldron bubbles over at 3 a.m. and there is nothing left to do but drive.

      It’s not the destination, it’s the requiem for how cities fall away with the red shift of accents with each new gas station, the rising frequency of Tabasco bottles at diner booths with each westbound highway exit; singing at the stars so long your throat is grenade-fragmented, drowning out the receding wails of all the naked emperors and their naked empires,

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