Steve Stewart

The Bicycle

The bicycle is a trope of religious amplitude. It
is a second-rate novel, a shaman’s chant, or a
triumphant change in history. The bicycle may
be a bad assumption, a type of reading
or expression now dead. It moves like
a catastrophe, a glittering purple and yellow

Jewish calendar, levitating through the sky.
Dennis claims it rests on the lake in mid-
January. The bicycle is not my wife’s purse but
is useful in partitioning the despair of our oldest
child. A cherub coaxes it over the horizon of
a dubious historiography, where it impresses

itself on our commodified feminist critiques.
Like a concept, the bicycle can be
spontaneously stretched across a circular
driveway. It is more than a dandelion root,
but less than a discourse on the role of blind spots
in the traditions of psychoanalysis.

Sometimes the bicycle is wedding heroics,
a leg-trap flinging itself over fences,
transference, projection, the flourish of a silver
aspen, a new query, or deep breathing.
The bicycle is my soul, riding my mind
to an infinite level of subhuman alterity.

 

Endgame

I tried dreaming of an indigo Fisher Price phonograph
and a summer bout of chicken pox. I failed. She was
a hip deejay, promoting a new kind of music,
damn her. You made her sound dangerous

but manageable. I blushed with erotic thoughts,
tried dreaming of an indigo Fisher Price phonograph,
floating for two days in my rubber tube
with a hip deejay promoting a new kind of music.

Mercy missions are lost with one screw up
but manageable. I blush now with erotic thoughts
of Cuba. All my maneuvering was a sideshow.
As I floated for two days in my rubber tube,

the spin wars broke out. Sooner than expected,
since mercy missions are lost with one screw up,
you ordered me to kill her right there, the girl
from Cuba. All my maneuvering was a sideshow,

like a communist system that controls its athletes.
The spin wars broke out sooner than expected,
causing big eruptions that stayed alive for weeks.
You ordered me to kill her right there, the girl,

damn her. You made her sound dangerous,
like a communist system that controls its athletes,
or a summer bout of chicken pox. I failed. She kept
causing big eruptions, staying alive for weeks.

 

Rose Whitley Discovers Makeup at Age 14

Perhaps if I were a machine I could
decorate these barren altars of my face
with something purer, something like steel

Or maybe I’d choose a photo of a nebula—
I’d become immaculate, caught
inside a constant becoming

Out of the seething turmoil of this world
I’d reinvent every plain girl
who needs an imaginary friend
or anything else make-believe

Or maybe I’d just remake their mouths and noses.
Then God could use me to breathe,
and I’d only need an occasional vague infusion
of flesh and blood

We would call this progress,
which is little enough to ask for

I’m afraid, God. Make me anonymous,
make me new, make me free