Poem: A Middle School Book Report, page 31

Willa Cather Review vol. 61, no. 2, Spring 2019

Willa Cather Review

Paved

The dirt is all pioneer and wagon rust, host
     to impromptu rodeos prompted
By the kick whoop of a week
     done well, but that was

Decades before, before

Main Street words like mercantile
     and Winchester
          dwindled with the wells

The dirt was still pioneer when Wilma Mason
     wreaked havoc by whispering
          Woolworths so often

That the womens’ dreams of tulip sundaes
      felt like adultery and made church hurt

The dirt, though soft and polished,
Remains pioneer, though unseen,

Though under the asphalt and empty
      store fronts’ lazy gaze

Over all that is entombed
Underneath: lost teeth, lost buckles
A Tibetan saddle blanket displaced,
Spoons and spurs pressed into the caliche
Like dinosaur femurs waiting for the
New wave of pioneers to pull up
The pavement and discover and gawk

Before rolling out the new hyperspeed
     single bullet magnet track for yet
          another future

To blow past town without a boot
Ever kicking the storied dirt

You Will Wish for Death

MACBETH

I bear a charmed life, which must not yield,

To one of woman born.

MACDUFF

Despair thy charm

the event, however you know it,

lingers in the conjured air, a final 

drowned bubble breaks the surface, a smoke

barrel empties through the kitchen wall 

the event, however you know it, is not yours

not exclusively, it is an attendant fool

attending to every certainty,   

certainly making fools of us all

our Jehovahs come without footnotes

our successions come interrupted

there are no stones to press 

against our ear, no revelations

of truth—just a roulette spin

landing on the improbable psalm 

coughing in a minor key, the chorus

sings ah, shit

until our griefs are polished,  

refracting the Kingdom, a bread 

baked weird, a moment so broken

it flips the poles of the earth 

upended, life will do that, break out 

in an event, a heartbreak so deep

it reverses the flow of blood

in the body

_____
Poets and Storytellers United: Well, that was unexpected

Faust Born Again

Mephistopheles: 

Now you speak more sensibly again, my friend!

You may yet naturally regain your youth, 

but that is written in a different book

and constitutes a special chapter. 

• Goethe

Oh devil, 

look, look

Now I have stepped away

from your crumbling book

    too old for this, and by some measure

        too young for this

So, pass it on

let your demons know 

my skeletal message flows graphic

rebellion on my mind, a secret source

trusted and tympanic

your power deflated, too dramatic, Germanic

your offer leaves me anaphylactic

here is my exit, my mouthful of noise

    singing in one cerebral cortex

        deflecting your contract

your myths are buried beneath the museums

and no one will believe them, I am staged

for a glorious debut, waiting on the rain

of ravishing reviews, you

were clever once, but

    it’s a racket, this pamphlet, I still

        had to pay taxes, these pages

hot-leaded, soiled with flashbacks

of loved ones I outlived, villain, 

my touch screen gone stone, atomic, and raged

Enter (blasted devil) the digital age

I deleted the last page, no

signature, you have lost my name

in the warring signals of skin and silicon

devil, move on 

my rythym rides the red line at a speed I choose

where there is no catch

Old Meph, get thee behind me, 

my mother is aching, her section is cesarian,

not born of woman, I am erupting

from her body multi-nonagenarian

go on, go on, the deal is long gone

and in despair you will watch me respawn

in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1….

August

a punched-out laborer drags

his steel toes and down-holed soles

August 2 o’clock he dreams

of an ostrich-assed dancer

with a three-olive grin,

and she buttons

his shirt to the scruff

***

at home, dozing in the maw

of a gapped-tooth puzzle, he suspects

that tonight he will make his

time-machine and hide it

from his wife, the future,

he can’t convince her

will be worth this wrench, this knob

twisting towards a glimpse

of bird-kin evolved—a distant granddaughter

curiously perched on the Gonnus Mons

she blinks away at a flickering blue dot

sings with a whistle, and boom

it’s gone,    

she moves on

Dial It In

kneel at the stuttering place, weep and
you got no park and no MasterCard

this seriousness, a May plan

circuit board stepping roadtrip—a world

in that description American addiction,

nap hallucination, and such disorder

welcome seems weeks away
by island-inspired awake, explore

assume rank, explore
the soap, the anti-soap: Himalayan pink salt
and rain lily—squat and imagine

Hey appears in Astropoetica

My poem Hey appears in the final issue of Astropoetica.