Brandon Brown
THE COUGAR
Sara saw a cougar.
It was terrific.
I swam with dolphins
and rode a wave
blazed on late morning
passionfruit gummy.
John had a frozen vodka
strawberry daiquiri
in the park with Eddie
“a new first.”
But Sara—oh my fucking
god Sara saw a cougar!
ANTIFASCIST FINISHING SCHOOL
Brandon called. My phone
lit up. I picked it up, why
not? We hadn’t talked
in twelve years, so what.
We just picked up where
we left off. It was the first
day of the fires. He called
to ask if I would serve
on the board of the ad hoc
group he had formed
to film a ballet written
by him and scored.
A take-off on the Circe
scene in the Odyssey.
You remember. Odysseus
fucks a lot. Set in the
contemporary Aegean.
Oh of course I said.
A little later he said
something great. Of
course he did, he always
has, since we met as
teenage punks with
the same name. We
recalled a night that
Nazis crashed a show
of his and got the boot
and how for a long
time we didn’t see so
many Nazis but now
and Brandon said
yeah I doubt Greg
(who owned the
club) thought he was
running an antifascist
finishing school and
I thought about that
phrase for weeks, when
Nazis were getting a
few boots and also not
getting them and I looked
up “finishing school”
ugh and I thought
actually I learned
pretty early how to
find a family, pretty
lucky, for that one then
and this one now which
is everywhere like I am
thinking of the night
Alli and I got up at
two a.m. to read in
Sydney with Astrid,
Brooks, and Elena and
the stupid obvious way
we loved each other
to tears across the world
and at Club Confetti
and Pre-Platonics with Lyn
and hollering over drinks
with Ari in the yard
then Alli and I adopted
a cat and called it
Pasta. A magnificent
man! And it turns out
I was still in a finishing
school and all my friends
were there but also
not. Several times I cried
myself to snot. But the
weed was legal and
the calls were good
except when they were
not. But like the stick
my brilliant friend
chucked into that old
green ravine, I’ve got
loft. Air in my shoes
okay? Sometimes
I’m so high I float.
THINGS I LEARNED THIS YEAR
for and after Lewis Warsh
what an ostler is
sloth is a form of love
the human face, being starlight, was designed to reflect starlight
two things at least can travel the width of the country: wood smoke and the pain of my friends
what lacustrine means
and as Sean wrote, “we are a blister on the law”
a neurotic sucker gambler really wants to lose
Liam is good
when you have diarrhea, the Lyft takes longer to arrive, no, longer than that
my preference is for pasta made with durum wheat and water
Zack is a coward
art fairs are horrible
that Joseph once rushed for 265 yards in a high school football game
the Sirens’ song was just knowledge
what it’s like to go to work when there’s a global pandemic
how to do a performance review on Zoom
how to do burpees
how to subsist with constant low-level panic at all times
how to see a friend and not touch them
that a dog pool is ridiculous but brings relief when it’s hot
there was sickness and death and then a roaring twenties
surgeons used to brawl for bodies underneath the gallows
how to roll out pasta on a board
we want to see Tom Hanks suffer
Shaq was magnificent
that there is bad solidarity, bad planning, bad logistics
that the ring trail on Mt. Tam opens three vistas onto the Bay
pickled watermelon rinds are wonderful
our neighbors’ names
how it feels to lie in a pool on MDMA all day during a global pandemic
that we always needed a cat
that “plankton” is a cognate of “flay”
John’s generosity practically mannerist
the paintings of Piero de Cosimo are tight
that all the deaths and violence feel abstract until they don’t
trying to talk to your dad the night after his wife dies is difficult
that there really is a thing called courage
Jamal Murray is amazing
jumping into the pool naked after workout is right
hawks eat pigeons in Washington Square Park
Tik Tok witches hexed the moon
and that I really don’t know how to cook rice
and a fuck rug feels good on the foot
how it feels to watch the Finals during a global pandemic
to already tire of writing the words ‘global pandemic’
how it feels to desperately miss flirting, to text with Diana and Shiv to say so
Sara jumped over an abyss with a broken wrist
Dana’s weed dealer is named “Timmy Biscuits”
that the day without sunlight will be the worst one so far
a kitten will eat until it bursts
fermented onions are good in a galette
Bunny Spurlock is an outstanding name
rollerblades are having a renaissance
Iago was 28
how it feels to hot tub on Thanksgiving
that it’s better to make up at least one song every day and sing it to Alli and Pasta
that “Let’s Get It On” sounds really good loud
Ari dated Chloe Feinman
time moves fast during a global pandemic
some cats like the sink, the shower, the rain
I’ll never be the same again
Neil Diamond wrote “Red Red Wine”
A DAY AT THE GETTY
High up in LA air
so high it’s where
Lebron lives—Lebron!
right over there!
Ruins tourists of the
future will know this
place by its bad
ghosts. The Gettys
were and are fucking
scum. Meanwhile,
in the summer of 1880
Edouard Manet was
focused intensely on plums.
THINGS TO DO IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT
Sleep. Dream. Wake up. Make a bunch of moans and noises, go back to sleep. Toss and turn.
Stay up all night watching Yao Ming highlights videos while your lover sleeps. Have sex with
your lover. Have sex with Yao Ming, if everyone involved is into that. Stay up all night
drinking caffeine. Stay up talking with your friends. Stay up all night writing poems. Go to
sleep. Lay in bed stressed out about the tax bill, student loans, capitalism, structural racism,
structural misogyny and transphobia, the dim prospect of coming revolution, the fact that you
don’t speak Spanish or Chinese or Icelandic if you don’t, what do your friends say behind your
back, what do the people you love most really think about you, was your fennel gratin good or
were people being polite, class war. Stress about your career stalled or at a dead end, your last
ten poems being garbage, fifteen years of smoking cigarettes, what is that dull pressure in your
chest and how long do you have to live and you haven’t read Proust and ABBA is never going
to reunite and stress out about what’s that noise in the backyard was that an animal? And what
was that? And that? Get up and check the lock on the back door and the front door, peer out
into the darkness and try to see something moving, it’s nothing, you’re fine, go back to bed. Get
up from bed and pee. Get up from bed and shit. Get up from bed and get a glass of water. Drink
it. Stop stressing out about what you said at a party in 2008, what you did in first grade, what
you failed to achieve in college. You didn’t go to Yale, you went to community college in
Delaware but who cares, try to go back to sleep. Take a certain number of deep breaths.Talk to
Insomnobot 3000. Count sheep. Take mugwort, melatonin, Ambien. Take sleeping pills and
sleep. Wake up and record your dreams on your phone. Masturbate. Go out and walk around
your neighborhood and feed the hungry dogs who live on the sidewalks. Go outside and look
at the stars. Skype with someone waking up in Turkey. Listen to ABBA. Pretend you live in the
Middle Ages in Europe and do that “two sleep” thing where you sleep for a couple of hours,
then get up for a couple of hours and then go back to sleep for a couple of hours. Don’t sleep.
Yao Ming scored 41 points against the Hawks on February 22, 2004. Think about your crush and
what they’re doing in the middle of the night. Do the Leonardo da Vinci thing where you sleep
15 minutes every four hours. But actually don’t do this. Get sleep. Close your eyes and count
backwards from 100. Fall asleep. Meet celebrities and dead relatives and friends in your dreams.
Say hello. Remember. Hello.
Poet Brandon Brown, based in California, is the author of five collections and chapbooks, which include Flowering Mall (2012), Top 40 (2014), Four Seasons (2018), and Work (2020). He is also the editor of several zines and currently edits Panda’s Friend.
Read next: Issue no. two fiction section