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Archive #37
July, 2016


Emily Strauss Composes A Letter
​From The Poet

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Emily Strauss

​Dear Reader

If I could tie the world up in strings
make a manageable bundle
that you can carry neatly
in your pocket
with its name on the label
so you can identify yourself
 
then I will have solved your problem
and I can let the words go again
to tumble around the bottom of the jar
like swill in a dank hold, and you,
dear reader, can afford to
ignore them--
 
the words I have hoarded so long
will wash out to sea with the tide
leaving you untouched and dry
as you watch the dregs run past
your feet without understanding.


Read the poetry of Emily Strauss
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Lynn White

Lynn White Reimagines Alice
​And The Looking Glass

Through the Glass

A long time ago, Alice saw herself
in her looking glass and walked through
into a topsy turvy world 
where everything was back to front and inside out.
She drifted into a dreamscape
of madness and unreality,
without breaking the glass.
She wasn’t cut by the shards of her mirror
or the place she entered into.
She had only to wake from her dream
to make things the right way round again.
But with a clear glass,
a transparent window to the world,
things would have been different.
She would look towards a place
where everything seems the right way round,
where everything makes sense
and adds up sweet with reason.
There seems no madness in this place
which looks easy for her to enter
and welcomes her without sharp edges.
But the clear glass is an invisible barrier
to the life on the other side
that seduces and entices her.
And to step inside she has to break the glass
whose sharp edges cut her, really cut her.
And then propel her crazily on.
Unable to wake, she finds herself in
a jagged, topsy turvy place
where things are spinning round wildly.
Where caricatures of humanity scream out,
distorted, trying to make sense of it.
Front to back and outside in
Everything is the wrong way round again.


Read the poetry of Lynn White
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Rivka Zorea: The Fierceness of
​Infancy Calmed

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Rivka Zorea

​New Grandchild

Her cries become a palpable
Sharp summoning
to every fiber of my maternal
being

In her infant rage
she manages to draw me
into her echoing
tiny protests

Her entire small body
is involved in her fury
baby fists clenched

her froggy legs 
now stretched out fully
soul piercing outrage
make me catch 
my breath

I briefly wonder 
at her intensity

this amazing elf like creature
wielding so much power
so much magnetic response

Her power is complete

Just as suddenly 
appeasement comes
 
with a brief frantic searching
and powerful attachment
to the offered breast

Read the poetry of Rivka Zorea
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Brendan Bonsack

Brendan Bonsack: Hearsay, Or Truth, Taken To The Grave

Grandpa

It just could be we inherited
The spaces into which you stared

Palpable, like clay,
Thumbed without touch into everyday

Objects: the cheap ceramic statuettes
Of English setters and other creatures

Frames yellowed by mists of tobacco
And all your various pipes

Arranged in parade beside
Paperback westerns and other pulp fictions

All glistened in the bathe
Of noon television or late night test pattern glare.

Under foreign trees, it was said,
You killed seven men

And buried your friends
In the mud,

By a creased and unknown
Uniformed man

In a chapel of empty chairs.
These things you take with you,

Conveyed to flame by automation
And polite sliding door


​Tread the poetry of Brendan Bonsack
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jacob erin-cilberto

jacob erin-cilberto's Fairy Tale Has A Personal Twist

slipping past midnight

i spilled my dreams
all over your blue dress,
and you became Cinderella
wondering why your prince
was so clumsy,
and full of shortcomings
and why the clock ticked toward midnight

and you couldn't wait for the carriage to turn back into a
​     pumpkin

and the horses heads to lean toward eternity
because you felt being with me was an eternity
on earth,

and then you picked up your broom
to sweep me away,

not realizing you had swept me
totally off of my feet

and that you had left my glass heart
in the carriage,

so that i could never retrieve it
in this fairy tale life

that has no ending.


​Read the poetry of jacob erin-cilberto
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Anara Guard

Anara Guard Returns With A
Stylish Rapprochement

Reconciliation

You, who blocks my way--
the bump in the road,
          snarl in my hair,
                    the stutter, limp, stone in my shoe.
 
The stumble, the hobble, the turnstile--
the crumbs in the sheet,
          grit in my eye,
                    lump in my throat,
                              my club foot.
 
You, who impedes me--
          stalls,
                    brakes me,
                              radio static,
                                        muscle cramp.
 
You—the rim,
the rail,
          the holding edge,
                    the hem, the belt,
                              the safety strap.
​
Sunshade, net, sieve.
My trigger lock.
          The filter, reins,
                    the parachute creating drag--
                              slowing my fall.
 
You, who catches me--
cushions,
          the hand on my heart--
                    the full stop--
                              there.

Read the poetry of Anara Guard
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 ​
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Grace Pasco

We Warmly Welcome Poet
Grace Pasco To VerseWrights

Bubble Boy

I see him packing up without me,
Getting ready to slip out the house while I sleep.
He’ll be careful so the locks won’t click too loud
Or the floors creak too much.
 
He is worried that the car should
Surreptitiously tell me of his departure,
Which would rupture the bubble he’s blowing,
The one he’ll ride like the Good Witch of the North.
 
Like the one in Wizard of Oz.
So I fold
And crisscross my arms over my chest
And act according to plan.
 
Awake, I sleep.
Then, click go the locks and
Creak goes the floor.
And the car? Is a narc.
 
I look to the gusts of wind and pray
That his bubble only bursts when he is ready
To land with hands open,
Unclenched and at peace.

Read the poetry of Grace Pasco
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Ray Sharp Celebrates The New Season
With New Poems

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Ray Sharp

​Midsummer (Two Tanka)

Deer in the hayfield –
the dogs watch from a distance,
underneath the pines,

ears cocked, knowing their own minds
with the sureness of old hills.

A midsummer night
breathes strangely erotic dreams
through open windows

clairvoying eleven does
wandering in the shadows.



Summer Sonnet

Say you are the tomato plant
in the container on the flagstone patio
of her garden. She waters you
when you droop, and snips away
the superfluous yellow flowers.
You are not the tomato plant
in its entirety, in her eyes,
you are one green tomato
swelling to unlikely proportions.
Ants trace the irregular canyons
between artfully cut stone slabs.
Now say you are an ant in a tent
in the rain. She sleeps beside you.
You both are dreaming of peonies.


Read the poetry of Ray Sharp
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J T Milford

J T Milford Probes Time
​and Mortality With Subjectivity


​Blue Jays

               “Once you have been there,
               you’re there forever”
                                         ~Mary Oliver


Have you ever heard the sound of Blue Jays
just before a spring thunderstorm?
their loud raucous cawing tells me

a storm is near
falling pressure and the far off sound
of a train whistle confirms the
the impending rain
a low distant whistle that signals
be careful something is coming
 
In this May moment from another time
the day stands still, yet time does not
 
I am in the first grade classroom
looking out the big windows
an instant, though it happened
over seventy years ago
and the Jays have long been sleeping
their remains reclaimed by the earth
this sound and image come
in least expected times

and as always, I am there

Read the poetry of J T Milford
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Dave Read

Dave Read Returns With All New Haiku And Tanka

Selections from New Haiku and Tanka

cold snap
I turn my collar to
her feedback

            

                    pecking
                    at something 
                    dead
                    the roadside crow
                    I swerve to miss


                                        
work shirt
                                        I button down
                                        my imagination

                                   
                   
tracing a "V"
                   in the sand 
                   the stick
                   he hit me
                   with


Read the poetry of Dave Read
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Brian Mosher

Brian Mosher: Crime, Punishment And Love

It was not a dark and stormy night

It was not a dark and stormy night.
No shots rang out in the humid August air.
No maid screamed, and no body fell to the floor.
No blood pooled, sticky and warm, across the linoleum.
But that doesn’t mean there was no tragedy
no crime
no heartache.
Because there was.
An 11 year old girl shouldn’t have to watch Daddy leave
with all his clothes shoved in black plastic trash bags.
That’s too young for that kind of loss.
A man who would do that deserves to be punished.
Incarcerated and berated and flagellated.
Not loved and admired.
Not told dumb jokes and secret hopes.
He shouldn’t be allowed to see the happy smiles, or get the glad-to-see-you hugs.
But she gives them, and he takes them,
because to not take them would be like leaving all over again.


Read the poetry of Brian Mosher
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Amauri Solon Gives Us A
​New Group Of Poems

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Amauri Solon

​Small Things: A Haiku Collection

​two ladybugs
in an old match box -

I miss my past

a forgotten overcoat -
in the pockets I find

dried forget-me-nots

rusty fishhooks -
I still carry with me

dad's wooden box

buttons and needles -
to my surprise

grandaughter shows her treasure

she blinks her left eye
fast as a humming-bird

I blink back - our flirtation

a purse collapses open -
miriad of beauty-gadgets
spread on the floor

pocketknife and a mini-flashlight -
the boy's trade happens
in a second


Read the poetry of Amauri Solon
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Robert Walicki: Snow, Laundry,
​And A Moment Captured

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Robert Walicki

​Snow

We don’t talk about inevitabilities,
but when the meteorologist
 
talks about lake effects and the cold front push
I fold the laundry and watch affected counties
 
slide across the screen
my hand caught,
 
skin’s rough palm on your soft shirt.
There are those details anyone might cling to:
 
The sounds of the roads,
impassable slush at 3am.
 
They say it may fall all night like this.
So hard to predict
 
these cold and warm fronts coming together.
I’ve left your slip, your dresses in the basket--
 
velvet arms folded across its chest.
You are sleeping and outside a neighbor
 
somewhere is trying to start a car.
Trees hang glimmering
 
like old fashioned chandeliers. The branches,
so full of snow almost touch the ground.

Read the poetry of Robert Walicki
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Clarence Wolfshohl

Clarence Wolfshohl Catches A Character...And Us With A Final Simile 

The Sign-Painter

He’s one of those cantankerous Missourians,
like the old man down at Jerome
with his Trail of Tears memorial,
said voices told him to build it,
voices of Cherokee who crossed
that way to Oklahoma, so he did.
Concrete statues, wishing wells,
A white buffalo.  Jesse’s Howard’s shrine
was of words painted on signs.
 
No voices, just his begrudged self.
The town now calls the hill
Sign-Painter.  He called it
Sorehead Hill.  Covered it
with signs and wonderers--
windmills and crude wooden planes,
spinning and catching uplifts
among outlaw words.
 
The black and red words
of Biblical import, of outraged
justice, of municipal resistance.
The pointed fingers punctuating
the text like the thump
of hallelujah.


Read the poetry of Clarence Wolfshohl
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Mark Dennis Anderson: Questions, Confession, Solution

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Mark Dennis Anderson

​The Changeover

Déjà vu is just tired neurons firing
into that part of the brain obsessed

with the past. Would any of us
be surprised if astronomers

discover that the universe is sealed,
shaped like a manila envelope?

Dusk is a minor second resolving
to a minor third, dissonance to sadness

but relief nevertheless. I am obsessed
with headphone jacks, deadbolts,

and sterile nail clippers. What if
what we fear isn’t that we’ll never

change but that we keep missing it?
Blinking sometimes skips scenes,

sometimes entire chapters. They say
human mouth cells replace themselves

every twenty-four hours, so kiss me
every morning as if for the first time.

Read the poetry of Mark Dennis Anderson

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For Dane Cobain, All Politics Is Personal

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Dane Cobain

​Keep the Faith

Everything is terrible,
and I’m dreading the inevitable tension
when I mention condescension,
the lack of respect
and the disdain I collect
for the men we elect
as representatives,
senseless centres of excellence
rendered helpless.
 
The footnotes of history books
were made for men like me,
who were born early
and blessed with a blend
of graft and greatness,
but I hate this life at times,
and we all do.
 
I don’t mean to be a Debbie Downer,
or to clown around
with a Glasgow frown,
causing trouble
in smoking bubbles
like the struggles we face
on a daily basis,
but you’ve gotta keep the faith
if you want to win this race,
and I hate the fates that make me late,
the mistakes I made along the way,
and the way I changed
and stayed the same.

Read the poetry of Dane Cobain
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​
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JD DeHart

JD DeHart Can Bearly Believe His Eyes...

There is a Bear on the Front Porch

​Of course, I check and see
him standing there, dressed as a bear.
Should not have left the trash out
this time, I suppose.
Should have cleaned up the yard
maybe a little better.
I flick the porch light on and he is gone,
replaced by a stack of boxes I place
there earlier, a creature disappearing
into lamination, conjured then into
a household set of objects, a common
jumble of cardboard and trepidation.

Read the poetry of JD DeHart
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Angelee Deodhar

Angelee Deodhar's Haibun Calls On The Rhythms Of The Natural World

Refrain

          right away
          a second winter rainfall...
          mountain home
                           ~Issa

The fire fills the room with a warm glow. In the distance, the outdoor wind chimes tinkle and I am reminded of other hurricane lamp lit nights, when, as a child I sat in bed, listening to the drumming on the tin overhangs of the verandah, the occasional flash of lightning, growl of thunder, crash of branches as they fell or the thump of snow. 

Now the wind is gentle, the chimes just tinkle softly…and through the night the rain taps out a hypnotic rhythm outside my window.

with a gentle whine
the dog begs to get

into my bed

Read the poetry of Angelee Deodhar
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James Croal Jackson

James Croal Jackson And A Convergence Of Then And Now


​Franklin Avenue in 2015

Two years ago, we would drink tall beers 
hidden in black, plastic bags 'til we passed
from laughter, fluttered to fill
our glasses with more.

There would have been more pages 
to turn, but none of us spoke our
human language anymore.

Now, a browned frond slumps 
between parked cars.

Two teenagers flirt
underneath a palm. Whispered leaves
are fragile– each movement 
a link to the next
until it is not.

Their laughs reverberate
when they, too, part. Uncork
those swan bottles–
let them go, graceful 
into night.

Read the poetry of James Croal Jackson
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​

Ramon Loyola And A Conundrum
​With Hands

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Ramon Loyola

​Familiar

your hands feel familiar
 
they are renegade tanks of warmth
charging through layers of hair
shooting pinpricks of invisible blood
through epidermis and veins
 
(i only meant to say hello
to wish you well on your way but)
 
your hands feel familiar
 
i can’t make up my mind now if
i should make them go away
or make them want to stay
or let my own go astray


​Read the poetry of Ramon Loyola
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ayaz daryl nielsen With A Memory Of
Winter And...Love

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ayaz daryl nielsen

​The days so cold

The days, so cold
The nights, so long
Another tundra
wind from
above timberline
Wild geese and
blue heron
gone
months ago,
black bear, deep
asleep
Mule deer and elk
hiding
among pine and
leafless aspen
The clock ticks
toward midnight
The year ends
Here, beside this
glowing hearth 
you gently 
place your lips 
on mine

Read the poetry of ayaz daryl nielsen
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​
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Michele Riedel

VerseWrights Warmly Welcomes Poet Michele Riedel To Our Pages

It Rained That Day

Between thought and page there was rain

all around the valleys and hills of my heart
and settled down around the depths of my hips
as I struggled to find the words.
 
Fog and light shadows of grey formed on the iced windowpane
where beyond lay the stillness of the lonely river James.
 
In writing I find no companion
-even here

Maybe if I close my eyes I could ease down below
and my words would find the page of river thought.
 
Stealthily and sleekly- sliding and gliding over stone
locked in muddy depths- rolling and rollicking through turns and bends
and racing down where river birds glide and icy stemmed bulbs of spring
find the sun just once…
 
But between thought and page there was rain.

A long rain of icy stark windowpane.
Where are the words –
when my soul has already traveled downstream?

​
Read the poetry of Michele Riedel
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Cheryl Snell

Cheryl Snell And An Unsettling Vision For Our Times

Another Name for Fire

Mourners fill the church where a boy's broken
mother lights a candle. Its glow ignites,
halting as first steps, radiant as a halo.
The flame stammers above the mother's hands
as she cups heat that will never warm her
again. When sparks fly, they throw shadows
against the walls. They gutter, and the shapes
slump to the floor. The mother tries to call back
the light, to pinch it into being. It's exactly
the wrong thing to do, and the church goes dark,
erasing the ghosts of young men who once
sprawled in the pews, their startled faces lit
in the flicker that just moments before
they hoped they'd never have to see again.


Read the poetry of Cheryl Snell
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LA Lorena Confronts Her "Greedy Lover"

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LA Lorena

​My Greedy Lover

you
you are like
my greedy lover
seducer of my mornings
you would make me your slave!
given your chance, you
would selfishly keep me to yourself today
ensconced in cool, tangled sheets
and plumped
within the confines of soft pillows
enveloped in darkness
embraced
in your velvet warmth
unabashedly undressed
hair freshly tousled
from dawn to dusk
to satisfy your innate need
to control me
body and soul
no words, no sounds
no need for sustenance
just a lover's greed
you'll lick at me, teasing me softly
beckoning me to join you
for another go round
how you tempt me!
Oh Depression
you'll not have
your wicked way with me today


Read he poetry of LA Lorena
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Mary Jo Balistreri Lets Nature Prompt A Universal Question

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Mary Jo Balistreri

​At a Writers Retreat in the North Woods of Wisconsin

A heron
braided in reeds and cattails
scans the lake
bides his time
A school of minnows
swims south in the pond
aware too late
of the heron’s spearsharp beak
Hunger quenched
the blue-shaped flight
disappears
in a gunmetal sky
 
An intracloud flash
brightens night like day
Thunder crashes—too close
And yet
a ruby-throated hummer
darts
untroubled
even as a rush of wind
swings the feeder
in a wide-wider arc
on the porch
Rain begins to ping
then pelt the windows
 
In our log cabin
screen door left open
we lie content on quilted beds
inhale fresh air
and pine
the busyness we carried here
erased by the green fuse
of incipient summer--
receptive to woods and water
fire and air
our bodymind fills
with a buoyancy
that almost makes us giddy
Your arm across my belly
you turn and ask,
What in the heck
have we been doing with our time?
​

Read the poetry of Mary Jo Balistreri
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Ana Caballero's Latest Poem: This Hectic
But Observed Life

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Ana Caballero

​Timing

Sunday taxi from the airport
          To the house
 
An hour passed amongst
          Children
 
Things set down in a place
          Reserved
 
Electric clouds to yoga
          The intentioned drive
 
A practice repeated endeavored
          Offered
 
          /Over
 
The sushi chef mentions the score because
          I am there
 
Tomorrow he will prepare
          My broth
 
The sky drizzles headlights flaunt
          The rain
 
/Again
 
There are no brief moments that pass
          Us by

​
Read the poetry of Ana Caballero
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Donal Mahoney With Two Poems Inspired By The Local Habitat

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Donal Mahoney
Trickle-Down Economics

It’s war
plain and simple
when I fill the feeder

out in the sycamore
with millet and niger
and sunflower seed.

Back in the house
I stare out the window
and watch juncos

and chickadees bicker
on the perch, spilling 
more than they eat. 

Cardinals and jays  
drive them away, argue 
and spill even more.

Then starlings take over,
and like rice at a wedding,
seed fills the air

pleasing the doves below. 
They walk like old nuns 
and peck at the manna.


Read the poetry of Donal Mahoney
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This Dark Morning

If I were a possum
with a tail that long
I too would hang
from a tree limb 
this dark morning
and hiss to frighten
the cats off the deck
away from the food 
and water, and then 

I'd drop from the limb  
and eat as soon as 
that fat raccoon 
climbing the steps
with the lurching sway
of a hungry Grizzly 
washes his food
gobbles his fill

and rumbles away.

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Leslie Philibert

Three New, Short Poems From Leslie Philibert

The North Cape

a wind of old nails
             broken stones
the sky a guilt of rain
all these stunted trees
              grasp over wet moss
seagulls are unborn children
              that cry over the tundra
this is the end of a measured world
this is the e nd ofa mea sured world



Grey in One Line

Looking over the pale fields
and old woods, I recognise
                           this can not be the
                           consequence of birth,

more a late push under winter mud,
as if I am as thin as cardboard,
                           one of no depth,
                           desolate as sleet.


Goodbye

Alone in a crowded room
                   she whispers through
                   her sharp cat`s teeth

Count the rest of your life
in days you do the same.
Imagine a space in the air

where I will never be.

Read the poetry of Leslie Philibert
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Ken Slaughter

All New Tanka And Senyru From
Ken Slaughter

from Selected Tanka and Senyru

an orange moon
rises over the beach…
holding hands
we see our shadows
in a new light


                      
grey day
                      the solar farm
                      gets a day off

                                            
                                          
shivering together 
                                          we search among the clouds 
                                          for the moon... 
                                          those clear summer nights 
                                          I never even looked

​
                      workplace art
                      maybe I could paint
                      after all


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Michael Lee Johnson

Michael Lee Johnson Mixes Social Commentary With A Personal Rant

No One Cares

No one cares
I sit in my 2001 Chevy S10 truck drunk on smoked salmon vodka,
writing this poem on Subway sandwich napkins.
No one cares my life insurance policy is a carburetor 
full of fumes, worn out filters, filled casket.
No one cares Nikki my cat; 19-year-old veteran, no bills, no veterinarian
     visits.

Jesus is a stray cat and a life of His own.
No one cares no one has adequate health care, deductibles clauses, debt.
No one cares Mr. Skunk travels nightly tail up passing
steam by my balcony window 3 A.M. farting both sides of his glands, anal
     release.

No one cares I still have microcassette recorders, obsolete,
old mini cassettes not found any more Wal-Mart, Target stores.
No one cares poetry-writing compounds saints, sinners, nightmares,
thoughts, twists insanity inward a lonely bitch curls.
No one cares lines of life too long, house of David too short.
Vampire is history drunk on blood, innocent-
shacks overload detail, house of horrors-
antique images, draft dodgers, war hero memories passed out.
I clutch Niles high school 1965 Memory Book $25 paid
between years past, many hearts gone-
I face thrombosis bulging encore in my right leg.
I failed English class. I slept through business class next to Tommy
​     James.

Rock star to be he slept, my head down desk, I looked back up
     cheerleaders legs.

No one cares I nearly flunked high school,
rode 35 mph in John Hibbard's candy apple red Mercury Cougar.
Even in high school, there were stoplights, cheap gas.
No one cares John's parents, both, hated me.
I see shadows, days as old memories, unjust wars, antique Studebaker
​     Larks.

Life is a worn out tread tire, rusted rims, steel now in junkyards.
Niles High School, August 15 2015, 50th reunion
sees you all there-memories, faces most forgotten.
Revising this poem backward confused with tenses, 
no one cares, I sit in my 2001 Chevy S10 truck
drunk again smoked salmon vodka.
I have always hated the rules.
Little penis travels in the dark.

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