[10/11/25]

[POETRY]

Exorcism

Three Poems
by Ryan Riffenburgh

Citadel (another mishearing, tuesday Nov 26)

1.

Feeling “collected”

A mishearing I wrote|
down in my notes.

Rocks bouncing around a bag

scratching at the canvas sides


2.

Let’s take this as truth

of two things:
(1.) I want to be “collected”

(2.) The bag will not tear,


3.

just expand.




Today has been too long
to step outside and think.

Pastoral Finally

I thought I was in Italy. Almost as if it took a
foreign place to untether from myself. Let reality
wash over me while I remained intact

and unfettered. Purple bougainvilleas turned and
faced me like I was the sun. I only picked them off
the vine if they asked.

I remember feeling like it lacked verisimilitude.

The author was outside
In the stables somewhere
Painting in watercolors
letting the pigment settle into the textured
valleys of the paper

And I just walked. I was un-abstracted,
finally
Maybe something was rooting for me. I still don’t
know, but my eye floaters were seabirds.
It was the beginning of representation,

like I had been given shape to orient myself
within

There I was picking roma tomatoes, I know this
to be true. I doubt I would mind if it wasn’t.

Bruschetta with fresh basil, placed by the window,
as if an offering.

Sword 5 (Ars Poetica)

You cut in order to shrink what you chew in order to not swallow anything whole

You could put it that way. At times I understand it that way. Or you can just say it is never fun. Labor for pain’s sake transposed into an object.

I watched an artist carry his for 40 years. He shuffled in August with the object over his head to block the sun. In fragile arms, arthritic knuckles gripping what they could.

In the rainy months it was the same. He held the object just above his hair in an attempt to not get wet. It set a perimeter, dropping down a curtain of water all around him. Everyone stared at the object. They made him stop at every moment to show them the intricacies

As they express confusion instead of worry
at the idea of the weather bearing down on his fading body

*******************

[I think you never realize how you constrict yourself to find the threshold of the blade]

#1.1 At funerals you button your shirt to the top and let the rashy skin pour over the collar because you think you like how it looks. Two pews behind you sit wailing criers in all their opera Now watch their form.
You see moist skin saturated,
Underneath laminae,
Pores are pulsing to absorb what will be released again during the
next song.

I want you to reckon with the contrast here.

Why you chose to tie yourself up this morning in front of the mirror. Letting crowded roots punch against the terracotta. Blind, watching for room to expand. They braid around each other. Coiled into terse wires. I think you never realize how you constrict yourself to find the threshold of the blade.

The space before cataclysm. You swim in its occupants. Let them gestate and braid.
Before you empty yourself out                                                               You can hold yourself in your hands

#2.1     It IS failure, art        A form of failure. Failure, without the overbearing negative valence. The way an engineer would understand. A system failure wherein the substance now stands outside the frame it was intended for. The chrome of the engine standing outside the mangled vehicle.

Frayed openings, shimmering metals

#2.2     In medicine they have the ampule. Sealed by heat, left seamless and infinite. A sterile glass capsule. The contents live freely inside, dancing around the interior unthreatened, unafraid of release.

Perfect, impermeable

The doctor must crack the glass vial in order to empty out its contents. Cracking leaves the ampule ragged. Gifting edges that will never marry.

A failure of structure–by design nonetheless–yet still. How sad to be the ampule.

Poured out and permanently altered

*******************

The only time I laugh with you along the river's edge is when we’re bone dry.

We can stand at the top of the building and see how much play is in the guardrail. Smile at the creaking mounts every sway. Find it funny how we can’t fall.

It’s only because we bind humor to our trust in the screw. In its ability to contain. To protect. We stiffen at the break of the screw; at the unchained falling mass. And avert our eyes from the exposed boundary. It reminds us of the fragility of the container:

the failure of its contents standing outside of it

It was never fun. But there is exaltation in true breakdown                         Somewhere between catharsis and exorcism

RYAN RIFFENBURGH is a writer and musician in Los Angeles. His work has appeared in XRAY, The Big One, High Horse Review, and elsewhere.