five poems
by Glenn Ingersoll
I tried to be happy
I remember once a therapist — a man claiming to be a therapist — when I said I’d tried to do something — this therapist said to me, “Try to open the door.” I looked at him. What craziness was this? “Go ahead,” he said. “Try.” So I got up out of the low chair I was slumped in, walked over to the office door, turned the knob and opened it. Then I closed the door and went back to my chair. “You see,” he said. “You didn’t just try. You did it.” We then argued over the meaning of the word “try,” as though it were possible to do something without trying. Arguing over words, I decided then and there, was not a business I wanted to be in.
A Stone
What if it turned out
that somebody loved you?
one stone asked another.
Why would anybody
love me? I’m a stone.
Some people love stones.
People! What good have people
ever done stonekind?
What if it turned out
that I loved you?
the first stone asked.
The second stone laughed,
not scornfully,
but because, well,
what else can one do?
Box of Tears
I used to carry a box of tears.
They were hot, I think. Prickly?
More cold than hot?
How to describe the symptoms —
masses, velocities —
They were aliens, really. Or maybe elves.
Elves that were never going to finish
weaving their black-thread tapestries.
Aliens calling across years of space
and receiving no answer
from a shattered mother ship.
Soul-wracking sobs, yes,
those would loosen the trap door
and let the tears tumble out,
pitter-patter, all aglitter.
The box was conveniently stowed —
sealed in a jar, packed in a carton,
pressed into a coffer bound with wire
in a chest over which a translucent skin
had been stretched until it burned.
The box crowded my heart.
I knew it was pressing a lung.
I worried about the damage.
How I wanted to honor them,
those terrible tears.
I wanted to rid myself of them.
To this day the box is full.
Otherwise there would have been puddles.
I trace circles with a finger on my chest,
circles narrowing, homing in.
I’m Not
At the edge of the cliff
I thought, This looks familiar.
The distance opened its
tender maw and my eyes
wandered the curve
of its jaws. Yes, I’ve been
here before. I know the way
a hot wind shakes the walls
of that throat. I’m not sure
it wants to eat me. Still,
in the wind I smell
the incompletely digested past
of all falling. That’s been
up my nose before, too.
I’m not feeling nostalgic, I promise,
the edge of the cliff soft and giving
as the lip that doesn’t want
you to think of teeth. I’m not.
I’m not pretending not to
miss this feeling, recognizing
an old perch, the precipitous
face below it, and the fear, which
was never delicious and
won’t taste good no matter
the fomentation of age.
I’m not interested in hanging
out here. This forsaken place,
its youthful hunger.
Going into Exile
I am already digging. I am digging so deep
nobody will ever be able to fathom it.
I should be shoveling air, I tell myself,
sweating. I’d rather dig up,
dig up right into sky, tunnel into the blue
a fine passage to the other side,
the place of peace and rest.
Into the clay I jam the blade, breaking through;
it’s an angry cloud and I a goddamn ray of sunshine.
Were this a hole into the sky,
I would draw a lid of grass
over it. Nobody need follow me.
I could be alone in sweeter air.
But if I can’t get there, I could dig the hole
into my soul, carve out the stone that’s grown
in the way of what should be road.
I won’t put a lid on it in that case.
The hole may, after all, go into the earth.
My head will have to stick out, I guess.
But if I dig under a bush nobody will see
the head, except the creatures accustomed to
scrambling about in the bushes, and they,
I know, are used to things somewhat in
and somewhat out of this world.
Photo of Glenn Ingersoll
BIO: Glenn Ingersoll works for the public library in Berkeley, California. Videos of his poetry reading & interview series Clearly Meant can be found on the Berkeley Public Library YouTube channel. Ingersoll's prose poem epic, Thousand, is available as an ebook from Smashwords. AC Books published Autobiography of a Book in 2024. He keeps two blogs, LoveSettlement and Dare I Read, and in 2023 began a monthly letter, Heart Demons. Poems have recently appeared in Big Windows Review, Cobalt Weekly, and #Ranger. http://lovesettlement.blogspot.com http://dareiread.blogspot.com http://glenningersoll.substack.com bluesky glenningersoll.bsky.social instagram @thelovesettlement