Futility

The bards of yore

lamented

all the times they

murmured love 

to demurring piths.

Today they’d say it

different—taking all the romance

from their strophes—

shredding every

ticket while the

numbered orbs will

ping-pong at their twins,

like the initial

break of pool; bumper

cars in neutrons

of an atom—Chadwick

‘fore their time

but not their sense.

Horses that were flogged

are now the drones in

Beit Hanoun—

the splatter of its

rocks like slivered glass.

How much smaller must

they be? The wine’s

already bled. The hush of

no more weddings.

Never mind the bride—

you’ve yet to even make it

up to maid. A spinster isn’t

such for how she threads—

it’s the bottle in the basement

on its axis, the boys who

pray it doesn’t stop at you.

Your gin at

90 proof

will spin the ceiling.

There’s a haunting

kind of silence

after trauma. A thumping

of the webbing

by the sill while it is windy—

flies all on their backs—

wings are the first to go.

See it in the f

that’s given up—drooped like

Charlie Brown, his valentine

reverted in the mail, its seal of

wax untouched like

it’s the cooties.

The custom goes back

ages. Britannica’s

Broken Hearts

would brim the world,

fettered by a bower

every side, a burden that’s

so heavy that it’s light,

a faith that’s made of

sky in place of pie—sliced in

30 pieces—no one even

showed;

and you beneath the leafless

mountain alder, willing

it to sprout; exhaling 

into navels of

balloons already popped.

Andreas Gripp

May 25, 2026

RF Photograph