Stone Soup Croutons is a weekly poem I write using lines and impressions picked from Stone Soup Poetry'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.
Thanks to Sam Cha for an amszing feature on Wednesday. I submit a poem that is woefully inadequate to the night. You're best to watch the show than read this.
For this week's poem, I thought about Sam Cha's new teaching gig, a hundred adjunct horror stories over the years, and I just went from there. I'm not sure whey I chose purple be a "bad" color to have. I'll need to go back to that later. Not sure who the "you" is in the poem, but I sure as hell hope it's not me. Thanks for reading.
First Day
Look both ways before
going out wearing purple,
the color of doomed adjuncts,
scores of Edward Munchs
waiting for the right bridge
their ultraviolet spotlight,
from sharing room with twenty
others begging to enlighten,
stuffed in like kitten sacks,
a madness Ginsberg, perfect
card dealer, clapped out and left.
At night, they lull themselves
to sleep with Rachel Platten
set to Philip Larkin verse.
They skirt mirrors to hide,
afraid they'll find mothers
staring back, shaking heads.
Don't let a building fall
during your next audition
foot stretching for new stone,
an outdoor patio table
with umbrella as office,
in line with forty others,
angry white men with razors.
They want this to be their
starting point to presidency,
your body as first reference.
They all will give good quote
to your posthumous volume.
All will deny knowledge
of stomping out your living ghost
during morning commute..
Hope you read next time, Toni! |
Special thanks to Jon Wesick, Bil Lewis, Bil Lewis, Carol Weston, Jan Rowe, Nancy Dodson, John Sturm, DiDi Ddlgado, James Van Looy and Sam Cha..
No comments:
Post a Comment