"Quietude of Minnows," by Hans Ostrom

Minnows, floating like flexible
galvanized nails, bunch their crowd
tightly in shadow, then disband
and dart. Clouds of starlings come
to mind. Quietude, sure, if only
I knew what that meant. I take it
to mean the opposite of noisetude,
so you can see I don't take it seriously.

For thoughts are imperialists and may
invade one another at any time. No reason,
then, to go out of your way to confuse
yourself and others. Or is there?

We need less reflection:
difficult to argue that. Of course
the sound of fighter-jets will intrude
noisetudinally (coordinates, please) and seem
to shake the surface of the lake
(to ask if there's been a goddamned mistake)
because we are at war again always, and the
joint-base is just down the road, right? In

other news, the Greed Opera is coming to town,
colleges have become pimps for loan-sharks,
Black folks remain under siege in some cities, decades
of that shit. And now somebody walks out from
the back of this poem carrying a gun,
a flashlight. I want to move but I can't. I

can sing, though, sort of, so I croakingly
melodize something about poets and minnows in their
schools, and I keep an eye on that gun,
and the Son of God is nowhere in sight.


hans ostrom 2014

Including Styrofoam, Blender, and Bomb

A lime-green blender vomits a mixture. The party.
The shovel in the shed equals stolen property.

An image of the spider's body remains on the page
of the book that crushed the spider. Ideogram.

As you talk, I stare at your fingernails,
which gleam like oiled leaves under neon.

She refuses to sell her father's anvil.
We used to poke needles just under and through our skin:

no blood. The man looked at six tomatoes
and regretted inviting friends to dinner.

I want to fry many minnows,
she said. Many. ("She's losing it.")

A drawer is filled with electrical cords--
black, white, orange: to what end?

When he was eight years old, he struck another
child on the head with a croquet mallet. Clinically.

What do you mean the condom broke?
What do you mean what do you mean?

The manager pulled on his moist nose and said,
"We are going to have to wrap up this meeting."

Closure. There was nothing left of the car.
An undetonated rocket was found in the village.

The photograph is of a child's hat in
a mud puddle, along with a styrofoam container.

Green oil makes the puddle shine in the photo.
I don't know. Have you looked online?


hans ostrom