-Lunches Passing in the Afternoon-
Jen paced. She had windows, and a scrunch holding her hair in appropriate tension. No she didn’t. It was that friz. And I think she was in more of a desk-to-hall yoga pose. I couldn’t decide if her pants-suit was a metaphor or if the yellow broach pinned it. Like a mustard stain I was trying to rub out of my poem. Tiny pieces of napkin rolling themselves joints by her face. What I’m trying to say, she wasn’t. And I just ate my sandwich. Egg salad, oregano, tiny olive oil. We make our order and someone wraps it in wax. Like all lunches should pupate. Their too-neon peppers drop off, metamorphose olives. And there’s Jen. Half a loaf, with Asiago cheese. She flaps. The office lights refuse to yield. Somewhere a stack of papers sloughs off; makes an unappreciated...
Read More-The Merry Retch-
I heard about this poetry form, the beau present, today by following NaPoWriMo and I had to try it. It is a poem where you can only use words that contain letters available in a given name. I think my mistake was using my own name (Tommy Richter). It, this is not the poem I expected to write when starting with my name as a source of derivation. Also, it sounds way too high-English for my taste. But you can only do so much for sentence structure with nine possible letters. I might have done myself a favour if I used “Thomas” instead; I missed those A’s and S’s dearly. But I couldn’t resist the Y of Tommy…and this is what I got for it: —- -The Merry Retch- To cheer my memoir I met the erotic other itch. Tho it cry mythic, I...
Read More-Bar Codes For The Dating of Last Week’s Milk-
The question paper or plastic? Is better in reference to back massages. In that case, plastic. Go paper on the crevice next to the canned tomatoes. I would like my receipt to use knuckles. Don’t squash the sourdough. Should I put raw meat in its own protective? Don’t tell me to have a nice day, if you just nestled toothpaste in with cauliflower. I already swiped my card, and that mechanical click hasn’t yet made a humm-clunk. I wonder if I should have got more bowtie pasta. Those oblong plastic batons make my unsalted butter more distinct than her TV dinners and frozen kale. What am I making for dinner? Perhaps this shirt has too many stains to wear in a salad. I could have gotten a cart but instead I thought my elbows were crook enough for a weekend. 00 Be the...
Read More-Textures of Youth-
When I was five, pressing my cheek to things was better than television. I remember the carpet, where I could feel each spring and poke of tan jellyfish fiber. Or an addled metal pole with spots where the paint chips and slowly opens its cold blossoms. Deeper than purple, with a pang like mandarin oranges. I would let car windows turn on their Zambonis and smooth my temples so the all-skate could resume its clockwise tingling. A wooden porch, with its prickle army and long noodle edges. There’s a twisting. It marches to war with pinch banners held high. My mom’s skirt. Hornets and flitting wings. A wooden firmness that heaves– oceanic as she walks. Then there were trees their flaky baked-with-craisins. An occasional baguet, or rooty dumpling. I could get lost in...
Read More-Springform Ghazal-
A suspension bridge runs from my lower back to interchange my nape. Tension is made of speed limits less than 5mph. In bumper-to-bumper twinge, with my knackered clutch foot. Even railroads have switches yet my shoulder blades don’t interrupt the current. This is an untenable strict fiber diet. I could chew calm or something savory. But It doesn’t take a roadblock to constrict; never reason a prerequisite for ligaments. So I am wound. Wounded is the same torque, same letters even, past-tense. Poems have no place in puns, say they. It just winds wind into the winding. What I need is a bowling ball and some gravity. I could break hard into this twist, and blunt trauma my muscles. It seems there is something relaxing about intrusion. 00 Be the 1st to vote.Share...
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