Glen Armstrong
Nobody Can Have Everything All at Once
I see the street
and, seeing it, create it.
The maps will be updated, and then cease
to exist as I turn away
to live in a box of instant
potatoes.
She says I’m easy
to talk to.
She thinks of me
as a certificate of completion.
She sees in me what might
not exist.
When she turns away,
the canned frosting expires.
In the street,
a violent young man leans
in to kiss an even more
violent young man.
She says there’s always someone
just a little more you
than you.
About the writer:
Glen Armstrong holds an MFA in English from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and teaches writing at Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan. He edits a poetry journal called Cruel Garters and has three recent chapbooks: Set List (Bitchin Kitsch), In Stone and The Most Awkward Silence of All (both Cruel Garters Press.) His work has appeared in Poetry Northwest, Conduit and Cloudbank.
Image: Ghetto Music by Gene Kreyd. No medium specified. No size specified. By 2018. By permission. Gene Kreyd is Russian-born artist with a repertoire including clothing design, film, music, photography, and abstract painting. Kreyd exhibits internationally, and his works are in the hands of collectors in Europe, Russia, the Americas, Australia, New Zealand and Asia.
