five poems

by Joshua Lillie

THE AUDIENCE

The rules are simple: you don’t run

in the street, and I don’t drive

on the sidewalk. You don’t cry wolf

and I don’t twist the narrative.

We’re delighted by the reels of koala bears

sucking bean stalks dry and getting high

off the alkaloids because they make us feel

less alone in our ambition

to leave the animal kingdom behind.

We bounce around in our own skulls,

feeling the ping of the ups and downs,

and we wish we didn’t revel in the torment.

But we like the attention. We like to dance

and cry for the same audience,

and the audience wants more and more.

We paint our nails to hide the truth:

that even when dulled, we’re nothing

but claws and teeth and brutal force.

The rules are simple: I don’t scratch

the surface and you

don’t gasp for air.

ANYTHING THAT CASTS A SHADOW

I don’t believe in anything that casts a shadow.

I keep mine folded in my pocket

as a convenient excuse when running late,

to claim I’m right behind you, I swear.

I’m what happens when you’ve got enough time

to kill a horse. I’m what happens

when you take an undeveloped frontal lobe and plunk it

in the chamber of a gravity bong filled with hip-flask bourbon.

I’m what happens when you surprise an armadillo

with a weekend trip to Pensacola.

I’m the face in the crowd that you can’t quite place.

Am I your uncle? I’m too young to be your uncle.

On second thought I’m old enough to be five uncles

cheering in unison, the whistle in the breeze

that might be a coyote or might be an ambulance

or only the far-gone sound of the ambulance

that cut your midday nap in half,

and what I am right this moment is the echo of the sirens

in the mountains, inspiring the coyotes to harmonize.

I’m what happens when you’ve got nothing to do

on a Sunday and a volcano suddenly erupts

beneath your barstool. I’m what happens

when you lift your feet and carry on.

THE THOUSAND-YEAR-OLD-TREE

I stare up at a thousand-year-old tree and want

to be nothing else.

I stare up at a thousand-year-old tree and want

to be stronger. I count the dangling rings

in a widow-making limb and think

it’s only the very beginning of an empire, or only

the shallow hole I palmed in vain in which an empire

was meant to grow. In the future,

it will tower eighty feet above the future’s heads, nine-hundred

and ninety-nine years before the future’s limbs

have even begun to sprout. People will speed past it

at highway speeds, never pausing to stare up

at the thousand-year-old branches, to forecast where

this body ends.

SNOW-COVERED CARS

From the plane at night,

I see five hundred and nineteen

snow-covered cars and one

on fire. In the morning when I land,

the birds will see five hundred and nineteen

snow-covered cars and one reduced

to ash. We will all be gray as snow.

ANIMALIZED

The caged bear doesn’t complain,

but what is the groove worn into the plexiglass window

from years of pacing

if not a grievance?

People go wild for animals seeming to do

things only humans do. Like crows riding plastic bottle caps

down sloping roofs. But animals don’t smile.

Animals don’t build skyscrapers.

Animals don’t leave one-star reviews.

Animals didn’t vote

for this.

We didn’t crawl sticker-priced before Christ from an ocean

of debt, but here we are, withering in the future

and blistered with memories. Here we are

with claw-marks sealed around our throats,

with bite-sized elegies drawing our eyes

to the scene of the accident. It’s not the reaper

the hungry dog follows,

it’s the scent of something hungrier that’s slowed to a crawl.

Humanizing animals isn’t the way.

Animalizing ourselves is.

BIO: Joshua Lillie is a bartender in Tucson, Arizona. He is the author of the chapbook Small Talk Symphony (Finishing Line Press, 2025) and the collection The Outside They Built (Alien Buddha Press, 2025). He was a finalist for the 2024 Jack McCarthy Book Prize Contest from Write Bloody Publishing. In his free time, he enjoys searching for lizards with his wife and cat.

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