Happy birthday, Big Other contributor John Schertzer! Celebrate by reading these Schertzer poems we published in 2024! And then go read the Schertzer poems we published in 2021, which were subsequently published in Second Nature (Spuyten Duyvil). Finally, also go read the Schertzer fictions we published in 2022!

What It Feels Like to Be Free

The organ grinder sends another
monkey down the street into peril.

That’s how we get them.
An arm
on the black box-making machine

steers the vehicle past the impasse
in order to remain hysterical.
It’s all

what you’ve heard before, but under
what desire?
The carriage was in

freefall. That’s what they said on
their wedding day and they meant it.

Jonquils bloomed, like a bond trader
trying to change a tire. No, more

like that in reverse.
Does it say anything
useful, or even dangerous to those circling

you in a rowboat out in hyperspace?
These moments have not-neutral affinity.

They blow gadgets rather than minds,
so that’s so-so. They wanted a convertible

lean-to cabana in the ulterior metonymy.
We wanted a springboard for laughs.

Don’t get disgusted with this moment.
It hasn’t happened yet. We need more

virtual pugnacity like we need another
hole in the story.
A clean dip into the river

of love should free them. Are you tired yet?
If so, raise three hands. We saw Sasquatch

in a moving freight car and hear he’s working
at the numbers mill. That’s not what we had

expected but here’s your function,
which is fiction.
Which is trepidation.

Enterprise Psychotic Socks and Such

Reeling in upholstery, such vandalisms
feeling they deserve more than they get

at this conflagration of clouds
clinging to things like stairs

and musical staves. I put my duress on
and occupy the station knowing full well

that the C5 insinuator is on the fritz.
I still need to move the movely over

to the second truck. But now time bends
breaking in half so that all operations are

suspended. Time goes to catcalls
and surface installations like, where

is your broom handle in all of this?
I see it but it isn’t a simile.

Figure out the rest is a story
but we won’t surprise us

not with these foreclosures
to grommet the moment with.

No figuring out stuff has a house
on the flail with dogs

and barks being placed
in even strokes across the platform

that makes you its address.
So they haven’t taken it out

of the trunk yet. The whole
poison is a vehicle.

Move the Movely

Reading out these lines, I forfeit
my right to remain silent. I have
strung the lights across the page

hoping the circuit stays. I’ve gained
a particular transparency
that makes me see ghosts

with a kind of vernacular vision.
It’s a habit that causes mischief
when changing tires, balancing

accounts, and with the norms
of human decision. I’ve
spent hours as a frog and

weeks as a salamander.
I spend these moments trying
to find the words to say.

I spend these moments trying
to find a head I believe I have.
It was there yesterday. It has

forfeited my right to remain silent
among these events, like flashes
along the horizon. Explosions

on the edge of the ridge that hides
the rest of the world from the eyes
in the head I still believe I have.

It is strung with umbilicals
between the real and the insensible.
And ghosts cling with their scattering.

The Rigamarole of Finitude

Says this sandwich from heaven coming through sociopathy to greet us here among the nerves.

A great talent for the cycloptic to observe.

The bent over flame redistricted as this profusion of the unjust against the wall of wave that enters sense.

I entered the cash register from inside the country, door to the left.

These possibilities appear as dots along the perimeter, smiling at each other, at the wrap of land that sues without saying.

What the temperature was up to and surrounds us, keeping still in a steady frame.

No excuses seesawing wind!

To be and not to buy things smeared in superstition.

We seam together for lots and desire a historical insertion.

Agitate the hapless knees dwelt in need to carry off the proximal defense.

As a situation mildly dense, full of air holes into impossible.

Born to run and panic in the fixnet compost of ideas to sustain as attitude of freedom.

That’s what gets everybody hurt, says the instinct of the system.

World pay extremity enfeeblement to turn the ghost to run over all of us as we operate the motor vane.

When every sentence is a thought turned sideways against itself.

Eye of the Needless

Things might look as they were at first glance, things like your copybook of stairs you thought were stars.

Things that look the same, but don’t have the same name, perhaps carried in the same sling to the office.

Then tell me who sits at the controls, and who officiates the balance?

I have been covered with worlds my entire life, and so far none has really spoken to me though they may tilt their head from time to time or give a wink.

Who slides the terrible prop between the things seen and things as they are, as if to make a little space to shelter from the weather, to sit back and eat a box of truffles?

I am often an annoyance out in space, a collection of molecules that kvetches endlessly.

Can you see me?

I doubt it.

I don’t even know for sure we exist, or if it’s just platitudes here assembling nonbeing into something you might invite to a party.

There will be an empty seat at the table if you do, as this is not who was meant to be, but a proximate beast who has gathered up its grunts.