thirteen poems written inside your local zaxby’s
joseph goosey
thirteen poems written inside your local zaxby’s By joseph goosey
Differentia Press Santa Maria, CA
thirteen poems written inside your local zaxby’s By joseph goosey Copyright © 2009 All Rights Reserved. Published by Differentia Press Book Design by Felino Soriano Cover Art, courtesy of Duane Locke Except for the sole purpose for use in reviews, no portion of this book may be reproduced in any form, without the written permission from the publisher. Differentia Press Santa Maria, CA 93458 submissions@differentiapress.com
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Table of Contents: ONE________________________________________________________________________8 TWO________________________________________________________________________9 THREE_____________________________________________________________________10 FOUR______________________________________________________________________11 FIVE_______________________________________________________________________12 SIX________________________________________________________________________13 SEVEN_____________________________________________________________________14 EIGHT______________________________________________________________________15 NINE_______________________________________________________________________16 TEN________________________________________________________________________17 ELEVEN____________________________________________________________________18 TWELVE___________________________________________________________________19 THIRTEEN__________________________________________________________________20
thirteen poems written inside your local zaxby’s
ONE It's wet in the palm, this mediocre sampling of hours. I am one session of waiting. Each minute has become litter. I am seven sessions of waiting either on a phone call or the Detroit public transportation system. Getting poured into the driveway barefoot, boots in hand, very unseasonal. This is an epitaph composed in a dry place which just so happened to have free wireless. Most of my volume is determined by a tiny man in a red robe. Not from the Klan, of course, from the Church where I almost drowned as a toddler and where I flogged my imagery as a teen, where I circled the parking lot on Christmas finally deciding no
TWO It's too hot for a gun, says the priest, if you're going to expire, do so in the pool. (Mister Levinson forgets his membership number and is very embarrassed at the dinner table) If I was your father it would be my daughters birthday and I would be proud but since my head itches and my buttons are scattered on the concrete I don't want to cry with you as an audience.
THREE Did you see that rat dart across the railing? We are being watched on the recently installed camera which means I'll have to bend you over quite cautiously. On hearts: One farted in an Alaskan shack and from the other, yours actually, I will not request a reprieve.
FOUR Remember buying new shorts in the Gainesville mall before Nana bought us steak dinners and cokes? Our success leaked from bank accounts and hastily constructed dancing. When I didn't invite you to come along to the putt-putt course, my air was filtered through the aluminum. When I didn't invite you to the art museum, well, that was some time after I realized that you smelled.
FIVE The realty magazines all smell of fruit. The colors are Easter in a dramatic family. The legs are bronze statues that do not touch: Popsicle sticks peeled apart at a child's luncheon. My Indian wife has such an uneven tan line so I suspect that when I met her in the Peace Corps she was just a tourist and faking. I slaughtered a goat for a 10:15 tee time but he had swine flu anyhow and I remain comfortably vegetarian.
SIX Hardly material the way our air is auctioned, the way we drip for it like leased out rats who nibble at the feet of the bellhop. QUIT SCREAMING INTO THE PHONE I KNOW OF MANY PROMISCUOUS INDIVIDUALS WHO NOW EARN DOLLARS AS HAWKERS OF INSURANCE AND SECURITY When I am twenty six I will be stronger but more polar. When I am thirty I will wear pink and you'll laugh. When I am thirty seven, they'll come for me, demanding I remove my wisdom teeth. They'll drag me hollering all through the hallway. I am now choking on the rafters of an undesired continuance. This is cousin Berta just in from Georgia, this is Dr.Gregory Avondale taking blind swats at a new way. Where to go? Who to see about this rash? Can we call it a rash? Even with this knowledge a flatness stands in the room alongside the lamps for which we paid a great deal. We paid in fluids, of course, our preferred currency. I gauge perfectly this recent increase of intolerance; for ill fitting vintage t-shirts for unapologetic housewives who are soaked through with diamonds and that discontenting juice of birth they pretend has evaporated. Intolerance for a crowded desk space and intolerance for no time left to drag one's rake around the womb like a private Zen garden. (It rains in gardens too) I like to my blood splayed out on a rock makes that rock grow. I like to stare at deaf blonde's who've been shopping. I stare at them as they skip across a trail of very privileged bricks I stare at them and know just how very unimportant the notes of the movement can be.
SEVEN I nail watercolors of a mutiny to the neighbor's wall and you desire for a more honed craft? Craft, Mister Jones, is a film about witches. One that falls randomly because the sound boy was scraping at the windows of the asylum all during the month of May. I toss marbles down fountains for the blind and you demand a more concentrated narrative? When my daughter tumbles out, we'll name her Finley but until that second I would appreciate the most gagging of plastics.
EIGHT A shepherd's weakness grows inside a dish. Everyday I look at the thing, sometimes there's progress, other times a still resistance. I document the experience on rice paper. With each second I become less formidable. I treat my body as though it were a pile of cloth. I consider health little more than a rat in a small nation. Mental stability takes sips of non-alcoholic beer in the hammock of a friend. The heat presses down with a giant thumb, I bled from the left ear and rushed to find the vacuum. I placed my lips on the suction. I did not become a new species. The disappointment registered on the faces of my audience, I wasn't pleased.
NINE The only propping of my body is being done by the chicken sandwich you delivered to me while I was at work. I am in love with your most recent pair of jeans. We should be a loft together. I'll be the exposed brick and you and play the part of the window. The sun will arrive. TURN THAT OFF! I'll shout. You'll kiss my third eye and oblige.
TEN The first time I picked up a paint brush it was in an attempt to do a portrait of Natalie Imbruglia. I thought if I could capture her cheeks with acrylic then she would say hello.
ELEVEN Even the clouds are bitching. That pornography was mediocre at best. Would you care to buy a camera? I mean, not from me but with me?
TWELVE My eighty six cents is the president's gravel. Cigarettes are up, coda to a fine time, this is not. I am both frightened of and enamored with the entire housekeeping department. A nice girl is left standing in the waiting area of a Mexican restaurant during an extended happy hour. Are there cookies at home? Is there beef in the freezer? At least, my little brother does not suffer from cerebral palsy or anything at least I do not have a little brother. Why is it that my cigars are all lemons? I tremble in reference to a lamb's skin framed on the wall of my room. With god, I would never spend my hours rolling a stroller for twins on the sand and in the sun. Where will the wash up occur? Remember Mrs.Dotson? Eighth Grade English? Her arm fat dangling as the Ohio flag fought a wind long before there were drivers of hybrid vehicles. Mrs.Olga Bouras was born in 1982 but age is cheese. The age of musicians, singers professors of life science or zoology... age is such cheese. That will be five ninety seven, says Joshua M. the gas station cashier. As far as I can tell, he's only got two teeth left. The front two. The most important two. He's only got two teeth left and his "Ford" hat is signed by someone. Maybe Dale Earnhardt. Maybe Dale Earnhardt Junior. His hat is signed by someone and he probably knows what I do not know. He knows what Mrs.Olga Bouras does not know. He hands me my pack. They aren't buy one get one? I ask. Buy one get one, he says, ended last Tuesday.
THIRTEEN Mother's rag, an atomic situation, the dust settles and everyone is a doctor. They are doctors with sons in medical school. Their sons will cum quickly producing children and they will decide on names. Names like Trip and Tripp. Trip will go to medical school, he'll meet Tripp. They'll meet twice a year after that. They and their families. They'll down smoked bratwurst on Memorial Day and rent neighboring homes in Virginia Beach every May. Medical school, an atomic situation, did we forget clean the linoleum?