Brian Kenneth Swain

Click play below to listen to a reading of this poem by the author. Camille stands among the lilies scissors in hand. In the parlor an empty vase glistens beneath the chandelier awaiting her return, longing to be filled. She looks from one perfect white blossom to the next, hesitant, unable to decide. They are perfect where they are, as they are. And so she sighs, turns for the house as the scissor blades slide coldly together. Back in the parlor she tries to explain the beauty of nothing, the bliss of inaction, but the vase does not ...

Click play below to listen to a reading of this poem by the author. He looked straight into me, through glinting brass bars, head tilted almost coyly to one side, a voice not his own Please don’t hit me. Please stop… Please stop… And the sound of a blow, its clarity unreal. And then the entire cycle again. And again. And I wondered how the bird came to be in a place like this, alone. And how many times it had to hear something in order to repeat it with such ...

Click play below to listen to a reading of this poem by the author. I wish I’d been there the night Houdini locked his keys in his car. To witness that magical interplay of bitter helplessness and cruel dismay. To watch the consummate showman struggle and curse, alone, crowdless, with jimmy bar and coat hanger. Succumb at last to the realization of his humanity. Clutch the cracked leather bag bulging with handcuffs and chains. Smash the driver’s side window, safety glass particles showering the driver’s seat, twinkling like a million stars in a black Budapest ...

Click play below to listen to a reading of this poem by the author. Fear not them that sell the body, but have not power to buy the soul. James Joyce, Ulysses The city night awakes just as the crushing sun goes falling down and on the heated asphalt streets that radiate and palpitate men cruise in cars around the station windows rolled discretely down so that the girls with lipstick lips and painted eyes and leather skirts and spikey heels can ply their trade beneath the lights from one car to the next car to the next car to the next car til the red carnival lights begin to spin and swirl and dance among the headlights and the taillights and the catcalls and the back seats and the front seats and the flashing red and blue shines through ...

Click play below to listen to a reading of this poem by the author. He sits in the back, where darkness embraces him with heavy arms. As the thump of bass slams up and down his spine, he watches the second-year law student as she circles and swirls above the stage. Like cream poured into black coffee, she has achieved a fluid state, her uninterrupted pudding smooth skin summoning all the curves and sways of his yesterdays. Her glow lights the upturned faces of the front-row fools with their dagger eyes and their tens and fives and their laughs and backslaps and lap dance lives. He sits in the back, ensconced in the black. And it occurs to him that this is his life. But he imagines he is better than them. He imagines she would prefer ...

Click play below to listen to a reading of this poem by the author. Noble Teiresias, turn not away, I beseech thee, for I have come in search of wisdom and the sight that springs from sightlessness. Yet tho’ I have journeyed far and suffered much, still thou mockest me, setting before me only alimentary temptation. Oh holiest of hecatombs! Thou must surely think me daft, oh seer of Thebes. Doest thou honestly believe I would travel so far, struggle so hard, for mere bagels and cream cheese? Nay, ‘tis council I seek. and no mere palaver. Put down thy fork, oh wise one, and bestow upon me, if you will, that boundless perspicacity of which the resourceful Odysseus did sing. For I would learn. I would know. And only when wisdom’s feast ...

Click play below to listen to a reading of this poem by the author. I do not know much about gods, but I think that the river is a strong brown god—sullen, untamed and intractable…reminder of what men choose to forget. T. S. Eliot The Dry Salvages The heavy gray sky does not relent. The late spring deluge punishes us all. but still we bend our backs, passing sandbags, setting them high and firm along the levee wall, feeling the burn of tortured shoulders against the biting chill of rain-drenched coats and sweaters. We are at least a hundred, maybe one twenty. Each of us wordlessly hefting the canvas bags and dropping them in place. But for every inch we build it up the river rises an inch and a half. And all along the levee friends ...

Click play below to listen to a reading of this poem by the author. An hour before sunup she waits alone on the beach looking east anticipatory, while unbeknownst a million stars decorate the black dome above her head, their infinitesimal ancient beams striking her with immeasurable faintness that leaves a circle of star shadow around her in the sand, an ephemeral hollowness she neither sees nor feels, but which ensconces her and makes her think, without knowing why, of someone she once knew in a place far away and a time long ...

Cum tacent clamant[2] M. Tullius Cicero I suspect today will be worse than yesterday. Waking from my standing half-sleep, I hear the collective incessant moaning of my companions. Their voices are softer this morning, but resonate more persistently than before, suggesting an unabated but now resigned level of pain and anxiety. It has been over twelve hours since we were packed ovine into this dank dark railroad car. I know this because the sun was nearly set when we were first put aboard, and now I can see through a wide crack in the car’s timber wall the sun as it begins its slow bitter crawl into the gray sky. We are one hundred souls – strangers whose only ties are country and faith, but whose fates now inexorably entwine along a ...

Preamble – How on Earth Did We Get Here? I suggested to an associate recently that it is possible to write a respectable essay on virtually any subject one can imagine, no matter how abstruse or quotidian. I then made the tragic tactical error of inviting him to select any topic at all, in response to which I would strive to craft a collection of cogent thoughts, and possibly even some advice. He, opting for the banal, challenged me to expound upon the making of a grilled cheese sandwich. So let’s get this over with, shall we? The Essay Proper I will preface this treatise by confessing, right from the get-go[1], that I am no cook. I survive largely on restaurant food[2], take-out, and the occasional freezer-to-microwave entrée, the ...