Poems from Federal Poets
About storing things you have said
Things you have said
can be salted and stored
in large casks, to be thrown overboard
in case of pursuit.
Make them palatable for further digestion
by soaking them for hours ahead of use.
Be careful which hold you pack them in:
always put the heavier things
in the lower hold, in the stern,
so that you do not founder
in a making sea.
Pam Blehert
* * *
Blown Up
Ultimate Destruction
wedded my best girl.
I thought they’d never
make it as a couple:
a nuclear shade of winter
and the color of spring,
one diminishing
stars and black holes,
the other helping build
floats for a parade
heading straight into
TV cameras.
Too many of their interests
wouldn’t mesh, though
the sex would slay them
both with euphoria,
the Reaper reluctant
to give either up.
Maybe this is about how
I failed to offer her anything
but a thumbs up when
she decided to paint life
black with her fortunes.
How I stepped into a garden
and simply fell asleep
for a thousand years.
How she wasn’t able to find me,
though the signs glowed
like Vegas, my breath blew up.
Donald Illich
* * *
The Help
“You have something on your butt,” she said
she had been sitting and reading, “The Help,”
and didn’t appear to notice her boyfriend
until she looked up and found some imperfection
a slice of light brown not really like [expletive]
but more like something that might fall from an ice cream cone.
He was standing with his side to her, holding onto the pole,
earlier he had let her sit down
She rose from her seat, letting go of the book,
walked over to him, crouching down, level with his [expletive],
and with her pointing-finger
she began to flick off the mysterious dropping that had obviously
upset her sense of him.
She rolled the grime between her thumb and her finger
until it disappeared perhaps into her own skin
or maybe it dropped to the floor
and she put her finger to her nose, sniffed, then smiled,
sat back down and continued reading her book.
He instantly tried to help, reaching with his hand and pulling at his pants
then pressing the flesh of himself, trying to get the stuff off,
but, she had already done the work.
She was the help.
He could have been her lover, her husband, her date,
but reading about the maids of rich people absorbed her more
than her boyfriend whose tall body must not have any imperfections.
I imagined that their sex life was incredible but probably very clean
and then the train stopped, he found a seat next to her.
she read, her played a game on his iphone, and it was Friday night.
I got off at the next stop and wondered what it would be like
to be so young, so clean, and filled with so little to say.
Nancy Allinson
* * *
Babies
I told my mother I did not want any babies
I lied
I wanted babies I wanted a creche full of babies
I wanted babies
sweet round babies
Like bowls of m & ms Like marshmallows
Whose roly poly bodies
you could pour on your face
piles of babies Babies you could wrap yourself in
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