Conformity

It’s not a different drum

to which I march. It’s

an inimitable trumpet

instead. There’s actually

no parading involved.

 

You’ll assume I’m talking Davis—

miles of midnight blue.

Or maybe Louis Armstrong—

the asphalt of his voice.

 

Gillespie makes me dizzy—

the spin of his crooked horn.

The bend within the tunnel—

where light has gone to die.

Symmetry has no place to

hang its head. You will be &

I will bop.

 

There’s Arturo & his Latin Train,

the scorch of señoritas.

More ahhhs than Ipanema.

I crumple in the heat.

 

I will need a place to cool.

Hang with Wyn Marsalis.

I’m the only one allowed

to call him that—for poets have

their privilege. We’ll talk of

cats and shades—

not of sunglass

but the umber under trees.

How everything is lovely when

it’s cloaked. Where a Manx regains

his tail in lower C. How we’ve

got it downside-up—

lost in the blowing out.

It’s the inhaling that’s Divine.

Unleashing its enigmas to the air;

too gloried to be entrusted to

percussion. The reticence of the   

space    

between its beats.

 

 

 

 

Andreas Gripp

August 31, 2026

photograph: Kali 9 / iStock 

The Accident

Our dilly-dally dog is the reason

that we’ll die. His last-second sniffing

of the soil. The bug in the

corner of his sight.

 

The mantis that will leap

instead of pray will bear the blame

on second thought. Our smashing through

the windshield—

like a baseball that’s been clubbed into

a neighbour’s just-put-in

stained glass. The shepherd and his lamb.

 

The key I forgot to oil

will be the death of us. Its resistant

nudge of time.

You should have prodded me to

buy a lubricant. Distracted by the

yelping of our mutt. That surplus breath

to pat his miserable brow.

 

We could’ve got a cat

when we had the chance. Her chase of

moth & monarch. Their wings ignite the

light of hesitation. A domino

in every flutter. A blink of an eye

later? We would have been someplace

else.

 

The left up Murphy Road that you

suggested. On the advice of Hans the

mailman. His boast of quickest routes.

The Easter card he carried

from Auntie Grace. The weight of

resurrection. Who even sends a

Hallmark

for a day we don’t believe in?

 

Until now. This is all Pilate’s

doing. His appeasement of an angry

crowd. The bowl that cleansed his

hands. Then again—the clerk at Dollar

Daze—entreated to help her

find it. Its hackneyed verse of hope

he read aloud. 

The pause to clear his throat.  

 

 

 

 

Andreas Gripp

August 30, 2026

photograph: Ariel Skelley / Getty Images 

Annabella

She showed us nothing

is beyond our mercy.

 

Watch her play the

lifeguard as her palm’s a

paramedic for mosquitos.

Form an IV with her veins.

Even locusts get CPR—

the warmth of her every

breath on each appendage.

 

She gave her Cheerios to

the voles we scoffed were vermin.

Stuffed them through the cracks

like tiny donuts.

 

She offered kernels to the crows

so they’d forget about the worms.

The more it poured the

greater her recompense.

Repaying her weathered

umbrella for all the years

it kept her dry. Tucked it in

her coat so it wasn’t

soaked.

 

She’d asked us in advance

to place a robin’s egg beside her

in the casket. A crevice in its blue—

like a fault within the Earth—

too tapered for the sun to reach

its core; redressing the moment

she was five, had tried to birth it faster

so its wings could brush the sky

a little sooner. Imbibe

a greater love before us all. Supplant

our gods & fate; the selectiveness

of their pity. 

 

 

 

 

Andreas Gripp

August 29, 2026 

photograph: Laslo Varga / Wikipedia 

L’escargot

This carny is a smarmy

huckster. Uses shells once

home to snails.

Swiped their only domicile.

Even the pea feels guilt.

 

He’s the realtor keeping

mum about a murder.

Boasts about location.

A public school adjacent.

We’ll see its boarded windows—

he’ll say it’s only closed

for renovations. Will reopen

slicked in tech.

 

We’ll wonder about the

other houseless laggards.

He’ll say it’s evolution.

That the French prefer

the crunch of vacant husks.

 

My mind depicts the one

that slipped away, with its sludge

like a portmanteau,

a salmon through a

netting’s only slit,

obsessed with its sense

of abode;

 

or the lamb which left

the others of its flock,

wise to the wiles of the wolf—

a slimy, faux messiah,

hauling his every hardship

on their shoulders.

 

 

 

Andreas Gripp

August 28, 2026

photograph: Kangah / iStock 

Al-Jabr

Math is a peculiar beast.

It’s how we frame the cosmos.

Its meld of number/letter.

It’s the way we fell our gods.

 

The preacher on the corner

disagrees. Jesus thought of each of

us on the cross. Hands me a tract

on hell, how we’ll spin like it’s the spit

at Swiss Chalet.

 

A geneticist was asked

how many of us fuckups

have ever lived. 117 billion.

Ten seconds for every one

would take thirty-seven thousand

jaunts about the sun. That’s a long time

to be hanging

in the pall of our Golgothas.

 

I wouldn’t just slouch & ponder

if it were me. I’d consider Carmelina  

while I rummage through the

mould of clementines. Angus as I

overcook my steak—no, as I stir

my curd of beans (I’m nearly vegan

after all). Then there’s Ruthie while I

water the hibiscus. My socks get

more than they. Amari as

I smash the stupid windmill at

Jehoshaphat’s mini-golf.

Timing is the sum of all.

I could’ve used the calculus

that I’d dropped—a squalid, dimpled

ball in the 18^th cup.

 

My Muslim friend Huzaifa

keeps his cool, boasting the Arabs

gave their algebra to the world.

It’s not the selling point

he thinks it is.

I refrain from wrapping my club

around his head.

 

Then there’s Poseidon the Euclidian

prick. His geometry of get a life.

I’d love to watch a compass

lance his flesh, have to figure

out the obtuse

of his ass.

 

It’s possible that I can.

Displace him to 

the front of the line. See him squirm

his way through 9.99

ticks—pencil on his ear, moored just like

a boat that’s set to drift,

far beyond his helix, whittling away

some nineteen billion minutes—

tallying all the tuna, naming them Juan &

Bertie like they’re human,

as if there’s something in the

yonder which loves you still.

 

 

 

Andreas Gripp

August 27, 2026 

photograph: Visnjican Dusanka 

The Extra

Your line in the play was a monosyllabic

moment. The tree in the leafy corner

calling hark! You could easily recollect

it rhymed with bark—

yet still you flubbed it up—

the boy who played the beagle

yipped & yapped, you lost your

easy cue with his distraction.

 

Snoopy uttered nada

for 50 years. We were privy to his thoughts

& nothing more. What would the balloon

around your skull bare

as you skulk in a comic strip?

Acting as if you’re mute

or Marcel Marceau. Or the extra

in the movie on a gurney,

pretending you are dead—

while the doctors rush around you—

full of their importance de soi.

 

The rolling

beneath your eyelids

steal the show—marbles

like the ones you lost at school,

a pair of bloodshot orbs

bowled to a gutter,

a cue ball’s hasty drop

upon your first & second stabs,

fishing it out of the pocket

in your shame.

 

Yet you’ll finally land the

part you’ve always craved—

the assassin at the Chinese

Theatre—dizzied by its bulbs,

the condescending scrawls

celebrity gifts, to those

below its footstool, its black bic will

bleed carmine—to match the carpet

you nearly trip on

as your time to shine arrives.

 

 

 

 

Andreas Gripp

August 26, 2026

photograph: Darya Komarova / Getty Image

American Gothic

You say she’s the farmer’s

daughter. I argue she’s his wife—

regardless of what Wood

unveiled in 1941.

 

You’ll add that we can see it

by her somber, vacant stare.

A spouse would acquiesce—

to the fate the cards have proffered.

A daughter still harbours

hopes of emancipation.

 

I counter I can’t imagine them

playing Fish. Gin Rummy.

Strip Poker’s out of the question

either way. Maybe Milk

& Lemonade. The object of the game

is to acquire the 2 of Hearts.

It’s the only face that matters.

 

She could’ve been his sister.

A tot who’s in the corn a foot above,

screeching in their ears like a

demon/banshee—

while he mended the peeling

storehouse for their grains.

We ponder the red of barns.

Why we’ve never seen one painted

aqua/teal.

 

The pitchfork looks so scant,

suited more for pickles in

a barrel. Its triune prongs

the bars of a prison window.

For the farmer? The Trident of

Prince Namor. A bequeathment

from his sailor-captain-father.

 

I struggle to picture them

smiling at a piglet’s squeal.

Beaming at the triplets of

a mare—it’s three-in-a-million

odds. Grinning at the joke about the

cow that passed its gas

in the Bishop’s face.

 

Or envision the bales of hay,

stacked like Babel’s steps,

so she could scale & snatch

the sun from their sour sky.

 

 

 

 

Andreas Gripp

August 25, 2026

American Gothic, Grant Wood (1930)