From One Stranger to Another

Kyle Seamus Brosnihan

Go find a stranger

ask them to imagine

what a billion looks like.

 

A billion of what?

the stranger asks.

A billion of anything.

 

Ok, the stranger says,

imagines

a billion apricots

 

a billion balloons

a billion stars

all crammed down

 

into the Grand Canyon.

It’s a mess, the stranger says,

eyes closed,

 

but they all fit.

Then ask the stranger

to imagine infinity.

 

Easily, the stranger imagines

going out into the world,

finding someone,

 

paying attention to them,

and asking them

about their life.

The Once And Future Past

Kyle Seamus Brosnihan

Forget the world was ever here.

If ignorance is bliss than the void

is happiness. The future arrives

too late, and the past is all

we have left to look forward to.

The beginning’s not what it

used to be. The future is behind

us and it did not last long.

Today is the first day

of the middle of my life.

So, is this all life is? Living?

There comes a moment when

I refuse to settle for anything

less than more and that moment

is now. Or it could be. Or it

might have been.

KYLE SEAMUS BROSNIHAN is a Filipino-American poet, playwright, and received his MFA in Poetry from Brooklyn College in 2022. His poetry has been published in Hobart, Peach Magazine, The Mantle, Interpret Magazine, Always Crashing, Boston Accent Lit, and elsewhere. His poem "Martha" was voted Poem of the Year by the Brooklyn Poets in 2020. His first full-length play, "The Performance," premiered off-Broadway in March of 2020. His work was longlisted for Frontier Poetry’s 2021 Award for New Writers.