I mean the kind of poem
that from the jump tells you just what it’s about:
I’m writing this for you, my son,
screaming your song in the kitchen.
meatsmoke & sweat
damngood i am today
eat with hands
i am not dead but i’ll believe
anything offered
in hand with a free
pulled pork sandwich
The hat I left at the rink & need
to keep my head dry tomorrow
came from Florida through a storm
& I have not. My father got it
Should I mention the latebloomers,
how they purple September?
though it’s true: sometimes buds
shrink into early frost.
Sometimes it never happens.
(K. Protagonist)
Like calving glaciers, chunks of code, of shale,
Nude descending a staircase, she shuffles
Stiff new cards without halving arch and
Release. What other game was there anymore.
No one to ask about the rules, except
The computer, that narcissist.
I wish I could remember it
frame by frame. Center-left,
nearer to the center field circle
than the half moon atop the 18.
I must bury the boy again,
who leaps into my limbic system.
My tongue. My eyes.
My spine and violence. I dream.