Michael Estabrook

Tipton Poetry Journal – Fall 2021

Give or Take

Michael Estabrook

Don’t waste time worrying about what you can’t change or fix she tells me all the time.

The fancy-pants astrophysicist with the big glasses and crazy hair explains in logical scientific detail that in 5 billion years (give or take) our Milky Way Galaxy will collide with our neighbor the so much larger Andromeda Galaxy and be torn apart. Oh no! I think and begin to worry but abruptly realize – 5 billion years, seriously! Even I can’t be that stupid to worry about something 5 billion years down the road I tell myself as I see the Devil in his corner shaking his head not having to say anything this time for a change.

Michael Estabrook has been publishing his poetry in the small press since the 1980s. He has published over 20 collections, a recent one being The Poet’s Curse, A Miscellany (The Poetry Box, 2019). He lives in Acton, Massachusetts.

Tipton Poetry Journal – Fall 2021

In Particular Light

Brian Builta

You walk drunk into the park one night after hours with your brother who is not your brother but who is now your brother and there she is: the officer who is kicking you out of the park who is the officer who cut your son down from his bunk that day. She recognizes you as a bad shift, the opposite of velvet. She asks about your family but avoids the blast zone she’ll not forget. Your brother is crouching as if to puke but keeps it together. Now you wish you were a daymoon, anywhere but dark as she ushers you out into the rest of your life, which was not your life but is now your life, this night a kind of jewel that will sparkle in particular light if you look at it just right.

Brian Builta lives in Arlington, Texas, and works at Texas Wesleyan University in Fort Worth. He has recently published poems in Jabberwock Review, Juke Joint Magazine, Rabid Oak, Triggerfish Critical Review and Unbroken Journal, with poems forthcoming in Thimble Literary Magazine, Main Street Rag and South Florida Poetry Journal.