2 Poems by Christopher T. Keaveney

HAVING HAD HIS FILL OF JUNK BIRDS

He passed
his final days
as he had spent
much of his life,
in service
to symmetry,
setting things right,
fixing what
really didn’t need fixing
balancing
that which brooked
no resistance,
leaning hard
into the living
because that seemed
easier than
any of the alternatives.


I DON’T PRETEND TO KNOW HOW YOU FEEL

About horoscopes
or Roe
or the latest Mets meltdown
about baby corn
or shale oil
about venture capitalism
or designer babies
about bullish markets
or gout
or 3D guns
about Dubai
or kombucha
about Elon Musk
or synth pop
or the the raccoon dog who can't really
be blamed for bearing the virus
to a cage in the corner of the market
unaware.

I don’t pretend to know
and don’t
and have yet to convince you
that it doesn’t matter what you think
or I
for what it’s worth,
so long as we promise
never to push too hard.


Bionote

Christopher T. Keaveney is a Portland-based writer currently living in Japan where he is a faculty member in the Global Liberal Arts Program at Rikkyo University in Tokyo. His poetry has appeared in Spoon River Poetry Review, Columbia Review, Cardiff Review, Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, Stolen Island, Faultline and elsewhere. He is the author of the collections Your Eureka Not Mined (Broadstone Books, 2017) and The Boy Who Ate Nothing But Sonnets (Clare Songbirds Press, 2019).