These poems will be appearing in Octopus Beak Inc's Cool Season issue:
the king
my brother calls to tell me
he is playing “kentucky rain”
over the loud speakers
on an endless loop
inside the retail store he manages.
elvis.
it is driving the college kids mad
& the customers out in droves
when all they wanted to do was
a little mindless work, or some
measly holiday shopping.
i laugh when he tells me this.
i am hungover and tired,
battling red wine, insomnia,
and ray carver’s poems.
november is back,
it is cold outside & the wind
is roaring.
until that phone call
a cat’s body was keeping my legs
warm from the chill of the apartment
& the horror of my coming work day.
next it’ll be “suspicious minds”
he tells me.
i laugh again, sadder this time,
& then he has to go.
we hadn’t really talked since may
& it was good to hear his voice.
obit anus, abit onus
i think about schopenhaur and caroline marquet
while sitting here at the work desk.
seems schopenhaur, sick and tired of the noise
this whore brought right outside his doorway,
pushed and assaulted the woman enough that
she took him to court and won a settlement,
a payment that lasted twenty years,
until the bitch died.
and on a copy of her death certificate schopenhaur wrote
“the old woman dies, the burden is lifted.”
as well as anyone knew, old arthur didn’t like noise.
as well as caroline knew, she stood to make
a good buck standing outside his doorway
yelling and screaming for all of berlin to hear,
waiting schopenhaur out.
so where does that leave the two of us?
i wonder, you lousy cunt.
me sitting here with the work blues,
thinking about philosophy and schopenhaur,
and the free release of assault,
and you at the desk next to me, dumb and oblivious,
shouting, blasting music out of your earphones,
and singing the same line of the song over and over,
just like you’re the only motherfucker on planet earth?
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