I was bored slash tired of reading Passing (it’s one of the few things I’ve read that actually gets worse the second time around), so naturally I decided to polish up some old poems and submit them to a journal of which I’ve never heard. So, in case anyone cares to read my probably-not-great writing, here’s what I sent off (again, just for the heck of it). I’m probably most entertained by the last line of my bio (“Since beginning his graduate work, Kyle runs on Dunkin’ coffee, usually of the caramel swirl variety”), which I suppose does not bode well for my chances of acceptance, haha.
Guy Fawkes Night (2011 Remix)
The reading
was at a bookstore that wasn’t exactly a bookstore
in which a Cat-Trapper sat with a Smurf and next to
a Meatball at a table overlooking a man who should
have been the love-child of Paris Hilton and Patrick
Stump and who was drinking not-quite-chocolate milk
from a recently retired jelly jar and eating a sticky bun
off the cover of a 50s health textbook while sitting in a
Victorian(-inspired) chair at the foot of a stage two-by-four
in make and space that stood in front of a window above a
Cambodian restaurant whose yellow awning featured a
blue chicken being hit by a red pot and whose clientele
seemed to consist entirely of people on mopeds but
no one in Anne Frank’s Attic seemed to notice.
The reader
was the Patrick Lawler who sometimes was also Robert
and Adrienne and/or Richard-Nixon-crossed-with-Vanna-White
and who once shared a room in a hotel flanked on either side
by faux-wooden conquistadors with a man not-called Dave
and one who was who collectively had the peculiar habit of
watching CNN at 2 am while the poet formerly and sometimes
currently known as Patrick Lawler philosophized about bird-poets,
weaver-poets, and poet-assholes and contemplated the mystery
woman he would screw from the audience of one I had and one
I wanted desperately to while I sat jaw-still-unhinged from his
casual-but-not allusion to “It Had to be You.”
A Lot Like Love
A young solider,
part Josh Henderson’s “Texas”
and more Alan Alda’s “Hawkeye,” sits
in a desert-camouflage tent.
He listens to the opening riffs of “Enter Sandman”
pounding out of a stereo powered by
counterfeit Iraqi batteries while taking a pair
of surgical scissors to last’s month’s Cosmo
with the same care and precision he gives
to cleaning his M16, whose virgin bullets have
never known the passive resistance of
rebellious brown skin.
He tacks a few of Victoria’s secrets
to the back panel of a computer station,
each sounding like a soft, ‘good night’
peck on the cheek as it pops into place.
In the canvas castle,
the Duragizer-fueled notes of Jack’s “Miss
California” and “Miss Delaney” drown out the
not-so-distant sound of Cold-War-era-rifle fire
that will kill his friend who once thought it was
hilarious to stamp a bright red “confidential”
on Pamela Anderson’s ass.
Scenes from Train 64
Afternoons, Brian can’t dream;
everything fails.
Gina, however, imagines James’
kids leaving Monday,
never outgrowing
parents’ questions.
Ron, single, thoughtfully
undressing Veronica, wastes
Xaviera’s yellowed zirconium.
