after Paul Klee

Though hardly a blockhead,
he only had twelve thoughts
in heavy rotation in that radio

station of a head of his:
Lily’s round bottom,
birds caught in a wind storm

and ten other ordinary things
modified by nine deep feelings.
This was enough for an ever-

changing picture, an infinite melody,
and when Klee lay down
at night, a swarm of philosophical

fireflies flocked to one thing
or another, burning rhythm
and beauty into the blossoms

collected by day: petals break
stone by becoming stone.
Stone catches fire; stone learns to fly.

—From the author’s chapbook, In Stone, (Cruel Garters Press, 2015); republished here by author’s permission

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 new chapbooks: Set List (Bitchin Kitsch), and from Cruel Garters Press, In Stone and The Most Awkward Silence of All. His work has appeared in Poetry Northwest, Conduit, Cloudbank, Cleaver Magazine, Sundog Lit, and others.

More on the Web: By, About, and Beyond

⚡ Cruel Garters Blog

⚡ Two Poems by Glen Armstrong in Vagabond City Journal (1 November 2013); includes “Rock and Roll Part Seventeen” and “Floating in an Above Ground Pool While the Last Pill of Summer Goes About Its Business of Filling my Head with a Gentle Fuckery that Could Be Described, in the Broadest Sense of the Word, as ‘Anachronistic’”