Selected Poems | Patrick S. Rogers

Concrete Whistles

A Knife

Suppose a use or even a slipping through, and then think straight toward a shadow. The double of the thing is always coming. Silver, but no shadow. A knife is a knot and a not and a nope and walking around the door, ajar, in the hall. Above, though below a knife is a hollow, a cupboard, steady driver. A screwdriver is a knife to a happy holder.

An Old Car Rim

Emphatic hurtling a dinged-up rim, emphatically so as to begin the day.

Floor Dry

Everything we use comes from the earth, metal memory is not a made-up thing.
Diatoms—twenty percent oxygen; we all work to the level of our own incompetence. Been wanting to place this try ever since hearing the word move. No real power in telling someone what to do. Now, clean the floor before the oil spreads.

A Window Sash

All of the ups is a down.
Through is no new place, one long of a longer, and who really knew there would be so much cutting.
One is the bundle of reason. Unframed is broken. A sign of what is to follow, unnamed. A piece of water is a permitter. The contrast to unframed is brokener and vaguer. Together is a through, all one place.

Spools of Wire

So what if he knock down a wall, Boris drive like he missed the war. Hope it’s not the last time we see the new temp hire. A length of cut pip juts from a whorl of bright wire.


Trigger Warning

It is my privilege to tell you to go                       feel this retching into emptyness
without and what I’m up to I’m not sure.               compact while stretching my intentions
I was supposed to warn against. No,                          to greet one or another with ethos.
for    or is it with? The bodily response                          do I think my fingers as I make a fist?
to violations against the body as if                                    beating my chest were another thought
I pierced my own body with something jagged.                  I’ve only ever taken advantage
It is not as though I was lighting                                        and the cost of such transgressions is debt
fifties on fire or put my cock somewhere                      to the other, though when or if it pays
it wasn't supposed to go. Homo-                                erotic is another thing altogether
phones are a danger; sew to speak                           the line between our two haves
follow the thread if you can                                  looks to be linking
like I said, (did I say it yet?) nothing                  me with you, you to them              whatever
will prepare you for what is about                     to feel the other, one must
to happen.                                                let go.

Patrick S. Rogers lives in Portland, Oregon with his wife, two Boston Terriers, and one black cat. He works at a non-ferrous metal recycler. Until now, his writing has been exclusively published at Mannequin Haus.