Stone Soup Croutons is a weekly poem I write using lines and impressions selected 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.
I also have a book collecting the best of my first year of poems. Click here to purchase it.
Stone Soup said goodbye to June--and with it, Pride Month--on Wednesday. What I post today is more of a footnote. More than one poem referenced the famous Stonewall Inn. The poem below is and isn't about Stonewall. It's about the loss of space. Something I feel these days as all of Boston uses the pandemic as an excuse to shrink my city.
I appreciate C.C. Arshagra bringing together one of of our largest groups of the year (seriously, every time I thought I was ending round one of the round robin, someone else would join us). I'm also grateful to Rita Rose and Bryan Franco for their almost bookend Stonewall poems that helped give my poem shape.
I'm thankful if you were safe this Pride Month. That needs to be said more than ever these days. Thanks for reading.
The Longest Last Day
Musician on bar's stage plays sadly.
Saw a dog in the street that looked
like his long lost pooch, lost to last
eviction and higher rents with no
pets. It would take a spy novel to get
deprogram learned privilege from new
owners, subject tyke to lesser food
from cans. Player sings a rooster's cry
loud enough to wake day shift drunks.
Bartender would call it Zen's way
of making everyone face the day.
Yeah, the patrons would say, but what
Yeah, the patrons would say, but what
about the fucking cock?All their pride's
a backwards baseball cap, too timid
to show allegiances outside, beyond
this cataracted glass. Voices just loud
enough twice per broken clock day
to say yes, they're going to live again,
pull their fish guts from their stools,
maybe give up morning drinking for lent,
fake death for a month, find out what
food they warrant for their funerals.
Storm crashes against the door. Someone
has come to collect. A government raid
maybe, hundreds of thousands spent
to procure such low hanging, open fruit?
If only the earth could shave off these
glorified attack dog walkers. They are
coming in. Maybe now is the time to
talk as we listen for first boot. After all,
love is what scares man the most. Maybe
report an unstoppable theft, have two stool
pigeons cancel each other out. Bartender
feels a breeze. Some space exists they can
squeeze through. Motion to musician,
have him play everyone out, hope no one
dies countless imagined deaths like lost dogs.
 |
| I swear this makes sense to me. |
Special thanks to Rita Rose, Nancy Dodson, Jan Rowe, Jon Wesick, Jackie Chou, Bil Lewis, Linda Ohlson Graham, Mary Jennings, Jeff Taylor, Bryan Franco, Rawle Iam James, C.C. Arshagra, Tish Ince, James Van Looy, Prasanna Kkumar and Ethan Mackler.
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