Guava Jelly

Everyone has a high tolerance for pain until pain 
comes along. 

Then you’re flopped in the pasta aisle.
Then you’re shouting about god’s threshing floor.

You’re just a little bird.
By you I mean me.

A great life would be good, wouldn’t it?
Like an old old painting. 

The compass unglued, my prayers 
are all for pleasure.

I would like to be a man drinking beer.
This seems achievable. 

This morning I ate one spoonful of lilikoi butter
and one spoonful of guava jelly.

Did you also briefly think you could live on air?
As a child I wished to be struck.

Asked, once.

I wished a parent could know me 
well enough to hate me.

When the baby grows up I want to be smoke.
Am I doing this right?

I mean I want. To be smote.

The landscape burns and the livestock continue
churning into whitecaps.

But this morning I ate one spoonful of lilikoi butter
and one spoonful of guava jelly.

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Quinn Franzen (@quinnfranzen) is an O’ahu-raised actor, poet, and educator. He has poems published or forthcoming in POETRY, Pleiades, The Adroit Journal, Bat City Review, Barrelhouse, and elsewhere. A Poetry Editor at Bear Review, he received his MFA from the Bennington Writing Seminars. He has received support from Tin House, Community of Writers, and Brooklyn Poets. His acting work can be seen on TV, on- and off-Broadway, and in regional theaters across the country. Quinn lives in Brooklyn.