Friday, July 19, 2024

Stone Soup Croutons, 7-17-24: Trash Ending


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.

I came back from my vacation, and Gabby Gilliam was our first feature. I enjoyed listening to this night all over again. Jon Wesick finished his pulp lampoon "Sledgehammer Ex Machina," which he's been reading installments of for the last few weeks. The difference between his opening and Gabby's poetry gave me a poem that surprised me. I'm grateful to have written it.
 
Thanks for reading. 


Trash Ending
 
Don't read much about 
pregnancy in pulps. 
 
Once you have the
kid, it's over. 
 
No more double
entendre one-liners.

Face held together
by constant bruises

peels back like onion
before every mirror. 

From movie victory
to freak show relic.

Everyone you put away
freed due to tampered

evidence, improper
procedure, excessive force.
 
Then the child comes,
and both sun and ocean
 
open inside your heart,
somehow not bursting.
 
Streetwise Gilgamesh has 
his own little monster. 

Feet permanently callused
from callous shadow dances,

partner buys chair in color
of your retired gun's metal.

From manhunter to catch
and release on Sundays,
 
anniversary wine bottles
opened amongst milkweed.

Every new taste on 
tongue, a communion 
 
turning your hard boiled
body back into flesh. 
 
Nothing happens outside
when you die. Inside,
 
a supernova-like eruption,
heart water released,

house left happily 
haunted, mystery 

of a life well-lived
at last, unsolved. 



Special thanks to Jon Wesick, Bryan Franco, Edward S. Gault, Mark States, Jan Rowe, Bil Lewis, Robert Fleming, James Van Looy, Ethan Mackler, Rich Boucher, Richard Spisak and special feature Gabby Gilliam.

No comments: