3 poems by Kevin Killian

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ANAGRAMS

Online guy, Neil Young
Canterbury Tales, rusty tabernacle
Marcel Proust, corrupt males
Kylie Minogue, I like ’em young
No real charm beneath Helena Bonham Carter
Michael Keaton the coke animal
Julia Roberts, bestial juror
A really sublime twit, wait, I’m really subtle, William Butler Yeats
Revenge is our way, Sigourney Weaver
Erotica villainess Alicia Silverstone
Andie McDowell, a wild old menace
No brains on a date, Antonio Banderas

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FLOWERS AND MONEY

Flowers and money I give to you,
these I hand you, because it’s May.

We won’t be happy having our
way, not this way, not this the

way of the fool, though so often
simple folly makes me feel I’m the

“guest” on a game show; and you’re the
host. Tinny squeaky music plays as we

enter. “Well Alex,” I whisper, “I
was in love for a week but all that’s

over now.” Pretty to say so, thus
appropriate, I thought, for

Spring anyhow. My accent fell
like a cut flower, like a crinkled

dollar bill, from some giddy
height into the gutter, a

“trashy” place for something
lovely or greenish. What a way to

describe one’s own accent. I say
so who shouldn’t, I give you money

and flowers, because I’m so happy and
because I want to—buy your

friendship, I want to be pretty
and appropriate, I want to have fallen.

You know like on TV the host gives
the guest a gift. In real life

it’s like my mother always said,
“Don’t go into someone’s house with

empty arms.”

For Jason Morris, because he wanted it

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TWO SWEDISH PEOPLE

Accident—or murder? Where had two steady, faithful, elderly Swedish people vanished to? What had happened that they had said, or left, no word before going, or sent none? Questions, whether verbal or mental, that had no answers. That held us in a mounting uneasiness.

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