Steve Brisendine

Boom Boom Room Without Walls

There’s a kid (then again,
everyone's a kid when you

hit my age) behind a beat-up
trap set in a doorway on 19th

and he's channeling Krupa,
big beats straight out of some

blue-aired Manhattan nightclub,
calling up ghosts of Bogota

and the Middle Passage –
and if you need something

beyond that, some nugget
of significance in any great

grand God-schematic way,
then maybe you should groove

more and think less; your hips
just might be smarter than

your head, and a quicksnap
fill can give you more

wisdom than any proverb
or metered rumination.

Steve Brisendine is a writer, poet, occasional artist and recovering journalist living and working in Mission, KS. He is the author of two collections from Spartan Press: The Words We Do Not Have (2021) and the upcoming Salt Holds No Secret But This (2022). He was a finalist for the 2021 Derick Burleson Poetry Prize.