Stone Soup Croutons, 8-28-17, These Bones

Stone Soup Croutons is a weekly poem I write using lines and impressions butchered picked up from poems overheard from Stone Soup's open mic readers and features. I figure out a title (and sometimes the rest of the poem) later. You can read the other ones I've done since 2015 here. To paraphrase Lorne Michaels, this poem doesn't go up because it's ready, it goes on because it's Tuesday morning.

Another Monday, another open mic. As I've documented in other work, this pas weekend was busy. With mention of the recently pardoned Joe Arpaio on the mic, this poem feels a little like a spiritual sequel to yesterday's Between the Headlines.


These Bones

James Madison, the Confederates
and other dead are dug up
to fight our battles.

They line up my baby brother
among the crib deaths
to be lobbed over enemy lines.

They fester along, Twitter updates
falling on deaf eyes like blind birds
faking sonar till the brave crash.

Smart-assed cadavers hail
the British are still coming,
provided they get six weeks off in the fall.

No one asks how a skull can sneer
or why seniority is judged
by twisted phrenology,

counting the fewest dents
on each dome. Do small skeletons
need pediatricians?

Do amputees find their limbs
as foundation for thrones
of revived armchair politicians?

Will Joe Arpaio be appointed
the secretary of old grudges
leading the charge on dead horses?

We wait for salves on resurrected wounds
other than hearing the cracks
on another comrade's body.

Sometimes I write something funny here.

Special thanks to Bil Lewis, Erik Fitzpatrick, Chris Fitzgerald, Michael Igoe, Nancy Messom, Melissa Castillo, Martha Boss and James Van Looy.