day ONE HUNDRED and FIFTY SIX

Let Me Know When It’s Time to Exhale

The day spilled its blood
above Amerika, the rich
play God and flip coins to
see who will die today

The devil stokes his furnace,
children eat cornflakes, dogs
water fire hydrants, women
apply war paint, while men

Defecate with the sports section,
babies cry for their bottles, drunks
do too, the president sniffs dope,
raises taxes on the poor while

Laughing with his finger on his
twitter propaganda machine
and his sick paranoia clouding
his warped mind under a bad rug.

--Catfish McDaris

Catfish McDaris’ most infamous chapbook is Prying with Jack Micheline and Charles Bukowski. His best readings were in Paris at the Shakespeare and Co. Bookstore and with Jimmy"the ghost of Hendrix"Spencer in NYC on 42nd St. He’s done over 25 chaps in the last 25 years. He’s been in the New York Quarterly, Slipstream, Pearl, Main St. Rag, Café Review, Chiron Review, Zen Tattoo, Wormwood Review, Great Weather For Media, Silver Birch Press, and Graffiti and been nominated for 15 Pushcarts, Best of Net in 2010, 2013, 2014, and 2016 he won the Uprising Award in 1999, and won the Flash Fiction Contest judged by the U.S. Poet Laureate in 2009. He was in the Louisiana Review, George Mason Univ. Press, and New Coin from Rhodes Univ. in South Africa. He’s recently been translated into Spanish, French, Polish, Swedish, Arabic, Bengali, Mandarin, Yoruba, Tagalog, and Esperanto. His 25 years of published material is in the Special Archives Collection at Marquette Univ. in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He’s listed in Wikipedia. Catfish McDaris won the Thelonius Monk Award in 2015. His ancestors are from the Aniwaya Clan of the Cherokee Nation and related to Wilma Mankiller. He’s working in a wig shop in a high crime area of Milwaukee. Bukowski’s Indian pal Dave Reeve, editor of Zen Tattoo gave Catfish McDaris his name when he spoke of wanting to quit the post office and start a catfish farm. He spent a summer shark fishing in the Sea of Cortez, built adobe houses, tamed wild horses around the Grand Canyon, worked in a zinc smelter in the panhandle of Texas, and painted flag poles in the wind. He ended at the post office in Milwaukee.