Wrong Heaven Again

by Ryan Eckes

Wrong Heaven Again, says the rabbit to the real estate. The poem won’t go away. You drive the car to work for an earth of its excrement. When the boss says “flexibility,” the grave keeps singing. The grave keeps singing, who built this city, that city? Who speaks for you when you speak? The latest apple ad says “let loose.” Okay. Light is a capital blown apart. No spoilers. You write your name down on the envelope and it disappears. We discuss thirst. We discuss our service to the revolving door. To the wound. We smile and pretend to compete with each other for a while. The sun cracks open the street, waves of old work now seething free of “the work.” And what are we, stepping out of this mouth, one dream after another.

Ryan Eckes is Brecht, probably, or better, deploying his poetry of crude thinking (plumpes denken) against the rancid confections of the present order. These poems tell the truth. – Anne Boyer

Reality is the only movie that keeps us awake at night, once wrote the Chilean poet Enrique Lihn, but when reality looks more like a dystopian movie, we can't afford to doze off, we must stay alert. Wrong Heaven Again by Ryan Eckes is the perfect pinch to that class-conscious poetry, sharp lines that tell it like it is. The frustration and exhaustion of the working class is summarized in powerful and lucid poems that denounce, letter by letter, the horrors of this individualistic and competitive capitalist system. In an ideal world, these poems would be mandatory reading in high school. Bertolt Brecht meets Roque Dalton meets Amiri Baraka. Poems will never make the revolution happen, it’s true, but a revolution without poems is no revolution at all. And the revolution I hope for has Ryan Eckes' poems as its soundtrack. - Carlos Soto Román

Genres: Poetry

104 pages, Paperback

Published October 22, 2024

Reviews

[August Bourré · Rating 4 out of 5]

There’s an almost punk surrealist energy to these poems. I liked them a lot, even when they were letting craft take a backseat to anger. Some absolutely stunning lines in here, but don’t come looking for lyricism.

[Elizabeth OH · Rating 4 out of 5]

There are some bangers but the overriding trill of unhappiness-not discontent, but good ol' unhappiness-slaps every stanza in a puddle of dirty water.