The Wolf, 30 September

I never would have

pronounced it Myeengun when

I was 3. A name

needed to be mono-

syllabic, in the utopic

“Summer of Love.”

 

There is little I recollect,

and wouldn’t save the T

of tangerine. I remember our

philia—thinking it utters ally—

bedfellow back in the day.

 

There were 67 left

in ’67. School is now

synonymous with his death.

And I bemoaned a

rubber ball

against my skull. Just a welt

and not a crack. Bequeathed

a lasting phobia

of lacrosse.

 

For the single year

I knew him he was kind.

My neighbour “John” Antone,

 

which I muddle with

Atone, as if his blood would

wash me clean—the heap

of Autumn leaves

atop his frame, laying beneath

the light, daring me to step

across his “grave”—the crunch

beneath my shoes as if

his bones;

 

the half-a-leaf that wouldn’t

let me go, sticking to a sock

like it was nectar; tracked into my

hallway like that piece of aberrant

love I cannot shake.

 

 

 

 

Andreas Gripp

September 30, 2026

photograph: Gail Oskin / Getty Images

Apophenia, or The Champion, or Driving in the Fog at Break of Day

Bad things come in threes

has been debunked. A deuce

will clearly suffice—for

maleficence

to unleash its ruination:

 

the left/right

dénouement—

to the goblet of

a boxer’s chin; the fentanyl

which will follow—

gulped with Whitley’s gin.

The discarding of the

gloves that botched the job.

 

We thought that two

had spoke of balance—

the drop of

the other shoe; a seesaw’s

down & up; for better and—

 

the nuthatch on the bough,

tearing itself asunder,

each wing off  to flee

their separate ways,

 

like us in the very second

that our Jetta overturns—

two pairs of eyes

agape; surveilling an

ancient marvel in the mist.

 

 

 

 

Andreas Gripp

September 28, 2026

photograph: Mirko (Nordic Scott) 

Kyphosis

Take my yolk upon you

and learn from me,

for I am meek and lowly in heart…

—Matthew 11:29

 

It was birthed by

every bend you undertook.

There in your mother’s

garden, hoisting up the ants as

if the Rapture. A three-year-old

reaping angel. Fingering their

antennae as though the strings

of a hydro pole—messages in the

wire you cannot hear

yet somehow see.

 

You envision its wooden

T, say it sagged

while bidding your father

bon voyage. The encumbrance

from screaming love

into its lines.

 

The beep while it was busy

was the muse for car alarms.

Vexing to the point when

no one steals or calls again.

Silence isn’t aurum it’s electric.

 

The backpack with your

textbooks was a station

of the cross—the second—

before the lot went

digital. You loathed the ones

who’d crack a novel’s spine—

there inside the bookshop

where you toiled.

Now you've knowledge 

it's just a way to  

get the inevitable over with.

Language is omniscient

when compressed. Haiku is just

a tome that’s gone erasure.

They say Issa wrote 3

hundred trillion queues. Sculpture is

the sublimity of our eyes.

The divinity of our hands.

 

What would you possibly

tell us—if you only had a

single word to share? How to depict

the feather on a 

stone which weighs a tonne?

Not the boulder but the plume,

 

when grief has hefted all

it could have borne,

arced from overuse,

wishing gravity

would ease its burden 

while it's light.

 

 

 

Andreas Gripp

September 24, 2026

photograph: Jeff Pachoud / Getty Images 

Nous Sommes Juste des Amis

You’ve stopped your

weekly visits, the uncorking

of Baco Noir, the finger in the

cheek we heard as kids, suspecting 

 

I've breached a perimeter,

which I confuse with parameter,

their neither/nor abyss,

 

claim you want to preserve our

friendship, as only the ice

can do; this affection of another

kind we cannot christen, our sibling-like

rapport, this anything-but-fall-in-love—

 

which permits a single captive to

abscond—cold-hearted prefect,

perfect in its judgement, opting for the

philia instead;

 

the other silently smitten,

burning when our

touch is accidental.

©2026 Andreas Gripp

photograph: Walter Bellamy 

Immortalitis

Here, in the conduits of

our progeny. The house that’s

raised in brick.

An Oscar on a mantel or a canvas

in the Louvre. A published

book of scribbles. A pulse in

the pith of psalm.

 

It’s not my poem that

hearkens love—it’s the blossom

on its page along the binding.

Its loss of scent

to must. The oblation of its sun

 

for the pall of dust. Compressed

as though there’s more

it could have bled. Forfeiting

every drone of

apidae, the imbibing of

its nectar—for a quell

like the foot of a grave

when soil’s tossed.

 

My friend in second

grade wrote Dave was here.

Using the teacher’s

indelible pen. As if an etch in his

mother’s granite.

If you’d asked him at

the time it was enough.

 

 

 

 

Andreas Gripp

September 22, 2026

photograph: Andreas Gripp 

The Introvert, or A Lesson in Topography

You respond to my

curtains’ close with a galling

no man is an island.

I was never a fan of Donne,

the tumult from his tolling bell

a cuckoo clock—I learned to

hate the birds because of it.

 

However I’ll acquiesce.

His verses are immortal—

mine are not—

as a result, I’ll become

a promontory, jutting into the

sea like a middle finger.

I’ll surround myself

with gators, piranha & electric

eels—the jolt of a wired fence;

a peninsula’s way to taunt

you are not welcome—

 

but should an extravert

leap the moat, my scorpions

serve as sentries,

their sting of a billion bees.

 

Maybe I’ll gnaw my tail

like a captive rat,

take a hacksaw

to my arm that’s wedged

in rock—like Franco in that

flick that gave me willies—

 

drift to the misanthropes,

the ones who’ve bent the rules,

an archipelago on

the vista, where visitors

are eschewed,

nod hello to our fellow

reticents if we must,

the calm of a single

palm in gritty sand, barbed just

like a hawthorn,

 

the gift of an

ocean trench, enraged as

Mauna Kea, spewing forth its

magma to keep its fish &

bards at bay.

 

  

 

Andreas Gripp

September 17, 2026

photograph: Susanrm8

Nocturne

They say

when you cannot dream

the madness will surely come.

As if the pelican in your sleep

is perfectly sane. The duffel in its jaw

a trove of onions. Their skins will

forge your poems. Metaphors

are translucent.

 

The robber at the bank

stole everything but the cash.

Held it up

with a staple gun. Swiped a lifetime

supply of stickies.

Now paper clips clamp his tie.

Inhales the Mr. Sketch as

though it’s glue. Elmer’s

gave our fingers

 

another epidermis.

Remember? Why the bull on its façade

when it’s the horse whose trot

you heard when it was opened?

 

Our subconscious is an archive.

Like one that cannot bear

to chuck the Chiltons.

Bro with the ’82 Camry

needs to fix his rusty

crank. A screw is a poor man’s nail.

Watch the Phillips fasten Christ

upon the wood.

Adhesives are not alike.

The artist

pastes his drawings

with emissions. I no longer

pen of cars.

 

The skunks are playing

ring around the rosie.

Chanel inside their pockets

not a posy. Where’s our 3am

sense of smell? Your nose has

40 nostrils and the wind is

heaving dung. Grandma’s bumble pie?

It’s over on the sill—

 

and still nobody came.

The guilt trip was

to Cuba. Cigars with a drunken Che

accomplished nothing. He’d asked to

read the diary that you kept.

He mumbled capitalism, that Bics

have been for ages,

blot when you scrawl of sex.

 

 

 

 

Andreas Gripp

September 14, 2026

photograph: DNY59 / Getty Images

Remettre à Demain, or The Reason I Hate the Dust

But of that day and hour no one knows…

—Matthew 24:36

 

Tomorrow is the most sacred

day on the calendar.

 

It’s filled with solemn promise—

gleams like the face of Moses,

stepping down in awe

from Sinai’s cloud.

Even Sol can’t mirror its

brilliance; Sirius

surpassed in glory.

 

It comes with sweat & blood,

marking doors as if

a Hebrew dwelt within, to be spared

a first-born son. Arrives in

stealth like the Angel of the Lord.

 

The altar of Tomorrow

will exceed our lamb & wine.

A cup that’s scrubbed of gold;

for the aureate can’t hold its

worth, the bursting of

our seven octillion

atoms.

 

It cleanses like the Christ.

Our faces in the shine of

its salvation. For what

are bedraggled hands

 

if not thorough?

Heaping on their fingers

every sin.

 

Tomorrow has a hymnal

all its own. Humming like the

organ at Notre-Dame.

Whistles like a

legion of marching dwarves—

for the least shall be the greatest

in its Kingdom.

 

The night before

we’ll groan, begging to be spared a

suffering’s chalice—

Gethsemane put to shame.

But even mercy must

pay the piper when he’s due;

delayed as a Saviour’s vow

to come again;

 

for here our roaches

shudder, these tenants who have never

defrayed the rent,

know that we’ve exhausted

X and crosses,

 

aware Tomorrow eventually

morphs into today, larvae

sprouting wings amid the

miracle of the dawn.

 

Andreas Gripp

September 12, 2026 

photograph: New Africa / Shutterstock