Three Poems by Thomas Swiss

In Hospital
Your mischief subtracted,
Your temper withdrawn,
You lifted, at last, your hand.
Wounded, you were cartoonish:
An alley cat waving a kerchief.

Warehouse District
In a light rain we stopped at Moose & Sadies
And drank tea and talked for hours.
I watched the riders go over the river
When you took a call from work.
In the kitchen, someone turned on Pandora.
Bowie’s “Heroes” played.
FedEx rolled up. A bus pulled in.

Pedal Pub
A centipede in traffic with a bar on its back
Motored by barelegged girls.

Exotic in Minneapolis,
But not so glamorous inching past Mike’s Plumbing.

Under the stadium and over to Hennepin,
An almost invertebrate biomass trailing a slop of lager.

About the Poet
Thomas Swiss is author of two books of poems, Measure and Rough Cut. He is the editor or co-editor of books on popular music, including Bob Dylan: Highway 61 Revisited (U Minnesota, 2009), as well as books on new media literature, including New Media Poetics: Contexts, Technotexts, and Theories (MIT Press, 2006).