Stone Soup Croutons, 3-28-16, Enclosure

Stone Soup Croutons is a weekly poem I write using lines and impressions picked up from poems overheard from Stone Soup's open mic readers and features. I figure out a title either then or later. It's likely some of the poets I thank at the end won't even be able to figure out which lines were inspired by their work. To paraphrase Lorne Michaels, the poem doesn't go up because it's good; it goes up because it's Tuesday morning.

Gloria Monaghan featured last night. It was one of the best nights we've had since I started to schedule features again. The room was packed with her students, both old and current, along with a host of other new voices. I didn't do the room's diversity justice in  the poem below. I got stuck with the first poet's references to roommates and lawnmowers. I went for a sci-fi vibe, but it petered out quick. I didn't even go in the order of the open mic, going back to earlier references when I had to. At any rate, here it is.


Enclosure

The lawnmower man goes on,
tries to convince Charlie
that he's the one true genius.
The other roommate
is unable to deal with them
and his girlfriend in tears,
as his bravest face is only
what it winces to after he tries
another roommates scotch.
This is the only costume I need
to be a brave man, he thinks
while he thumbs her Victoria's
Secret catalog, surveys the page
for someone looking for
another white knight.
Black people have it worse
than us you know,
is what he wants to tell her
though until he was a sophomore
all he knew about Flint, Michigan
was that Michael Moore lived there.
He needs to say something
to get her out of is bed
for the last time.
She hasn't moved in days,
and all he can do
is talk like his father
while remembering that
sometimes other colors hurt.
The girl fantasizes being
a daughter of Pleiades,
a pride of sisters at her side
just to feel that anyone
besides him is ignoring her.
She dreams of a day
she'll never see
where he sits on another bed
with another crying girl
the cycle repeating
like an overlooked chore wheel
until he realizes
he's a bad person,
and some how the revelation
will be delivered to her
carried in the wind
as an overdue apology
breaking up like a driveway sprout
terrifying the landlords
on their way to evict them.

More things happened than can be represented by the clipboard...or even the poem.

Special Thanks to Temour Raza, Ellen Butts, Chris Robbins, David P. Miller, Nick Lemiesz, Martha Boss, Matt Parker, Paige Lorraine, Mars Jupiter and Gloria Monaghan.