2 days after
mike's mother shot
herself w/an old 32
he asked me to help
burn the chicken
coop out behind the
wrecked ford sd he'd
dreamt death lived
there & he wanted to
chase it clear out
of the yard when the
boards began to crack
in the heat mike threw
the 32 into the flames
then a river of sparks
flew into the night
mike's father was
crouched far back in
the whiskey dark i
don't know if he was
talking to us or the
fire when he asked
is the gun dead yet.
-- todd moore
Handsome America
I found a finger by the side of the road
on the sunny side of the street
One day in the month of Mayberry,
"Americana," I stated.
My country is a she
Unwashed behind the knees
What will become of thee.
I've interrupted too many
tender moments in my time
not to know
the toweling off that needs to be done
in this country of mine
or not to realize
what a crime fingers are around town.
Cause fingers are few
and far between them
can be found a funny kind of filth
which only fingers and
large industralized
toaster shaped nations
could know about.
You could know about it also.
But it's ten o'clock
and you don't know
where your fingers are.
-- James J. Kearney
No Title
A time exists when an object can replace any body part
and vice versa.
The metaphor becomes actual
and DuPont is the poet.
Then you hug me with your Westinghouse blenders
and milkshakes flow out of my viens.
-- Alex Jager
The King is a Bald, Fat, Middle-Aged Pervert
Elvis
followed me home
from school again
today
-- Holly Day
A Great Big Haiku Howdy #1
Squiggled silence
crawls upstream. History
giggles.
A Great Big Haiku Howdy #2
Basset's baby ears
wet with 2% milk. Great
Wall of China.
-- Wayne Hogan
Dating Hamlet
Horatio liked me first.
Alas,
not my type
or even
archetype,
whispering at my collarbone
that I was all,
reason enough
(more things, Horatio,
more).
But Hamlet,
skateboard variety
philosopher,
regal,
melancholy in his high tops.
Of course
he could never decide:
miniature golf?
a play.
One night
at Elsinore,
ghost stories in his room
(Claudius bowling,
Gertrude had PTA),
a buttery sweep of bangs
accidental across my back,
he sighed
Ophelia
by mistake,
but forgave us all
for frailty.
There is method,
and there is madness:
I remind him
of his mother.
-- Lisa Caliendo