By Todd Colby.<\/p>\n
Iowa<\/p>\n
Life alone creams such zones
\nLike a knee is gouged and no one is there.
\nYou might take a stab at not being there.
\nPoultice nabbed by people on stoops,
\nGreen glass medallion flashing in the dirt lot.
\nWhen the ring tops of bottles bare fists
\nThe rags will later be wrapped over wounds,
\nGood as a rung of a ladder, my jab.
\nThe L-step, programmed a melee
\nYou did not have to tell a story or
\nnothing like that like a craving to hear a story.
\nOr wanting a story or even having discussed it.
\nI was a vandal then, marshmallows on
\nWindshields and such, Iowa.<\/p>\n
From a Desk<\/p>\n
This guy has some rooting around to do.
\nA spill is current, at least with the bright berry stains
\ndotting the fence around the hedges.
\nThe children knew that the leisure puppet
\nhad been repaired with glue made from the hooves of wild horses
\nand it frightened them. They separated themselves into distracted,
\nclownish brackets-spaced wildly.
\nI had not thought to brush the glass from their hair
\nso I masked my expressions of horror
\nwith brown twine. It made my face ache. Just as
\na dog will rip into a swimmer’s face, so my big bummer
\nhas sprung into different parts. The ruthlessness
\nof the intern, career-wise, all the misery foretold.
\nI locked arms with a witless celebrant, being the gloomy one-
\nalways racing the animals, competing with them in a pool
\nuntil they can’t take it anymore-until they give up hope.<\/p>\n
Arnica<\/p>\n
To be calm
\nis to be comfortably
\nmoist at the hip. My tongue
\nis shaped like something sucked
\nfrom a shell. My sparks are still good,
\nI shed them in the golden light
\nof 8th Avenue all the way
\nacross town where the cab drivers veer toward me.
\nBrisk doors whoosh past all the guys from Tech
\nSchool. They see me with steel eyes
\nand stand up to the sound of a skidding car.
\nI don’t care
\nif you don’t have
\na care in the world-
\nyou see me and I see
\nthe day is not-so-quietly exploding
\nwhile Mercury humps mythical pudding into blue smoke.
\nI’ll sit right down in Gramercy Park on that fenced off patch of
\nsilvery
\ngrass.
\nI had my photo taken there once and never got it back.
\nThere’s a part of me that twinkles like slivers of glass
\nembedded in the sidewalk and another part that I have to read about
\nin magazines to get a grip on what the fuck I’m up to. Clipped
\nand sordid, I bake in the sunlight and sculpt
\nsexy shapes from the granite we’re built on.
\nI’ve explained my problem
\nwith my leg in the air and I can’t get
\nanyone to act like that.
\nStill, the pieces of me; they glitter,
\nsort of, it’s this glass, I’m real.
\nDon’t let me distract you
\nwith this tincture for bruises-
\nmaybe I should, you know,
\nstop. Calm as the everglades,
\nI’m not so sure.<\/p>\n
Squash Buckler<\/p>\n
Noble one of simmer mode
\nThe hankie is pulverized
\nBy the wedge of sports
\nA vehicle of downers
\nA drowsy stagehand
\nMagnificent oranges
\nAll the wedding cake you
\nCan eat a handful
\nAt a time.<\/p>\n
ABOUT THE AUTHOR<\/strong> This guy has some rooting around to do. \nBy Todd Colby<\/b>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":119,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1954","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1954","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/119"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1954"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1954\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1954"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1954"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1954"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nTodd Colby<\/strong> is the author of Tremble & Shine<\/em> (Soft Skull Press, 2004) and Riot in the Charm Factory: New and Selected Work<\/em> (Soft Skull Press, 2000). He recently published a limited edition graphic novel with the artist David Lantow entitled Sympathetic Detonations<\/em> (Evil Clown Books, 2005). The novel is only available by contacting the author. He lives in Brooklyn, NY with his wife, the artist Elizabeth Zechel.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\nA spill is current, at least with the bright berry stains
\ndotting the fence around the hedges.<\/p>\n