sixty-one by Jonah Meyer
sixty-one times i lost my soul to the small asian lady wearing pink cotton jumpsuit and large copper earrings behind the counter at my favourite place to grab lunch in san francisco chinatown
sixty-one times the colour of my true love’s hair
sixty-one the number of tics i glance at the young couple as they sink into snuggling state of union, the movie theatre down in the dark front-corner row, matinee showing of the life of freddie mercury
sixty-one times playing with soft language until we approximate
literary ejaculation
sixty-one calls to arm a busy nation policing the planet
a budweiser country high on box-office porn, buttered beer and blustering pontification
woke up this morning with poetry crusted in the eyes, tried to rinse it out while it spilled into these dog-eared pages
sixty-one stages in pure confused delight
sixty-one flags lowered at half-mast
some small god’s wind attempting to schmear it back up
the length of the pole
sixty-one, says the city bus driver
6161 pennsylvania avenue, dripping with blood,
fangs in the eye-sockets
and kerouac’s railroad earth is drenched in sunset
and all of general georgie washington’s d.c. is drenched in heavy flooded moonshine machinery
observe the great heavenly satellite sky hovering over every man woman child—she is a drunken sailor, smacking chewing gum grit & grin
and the humble buddha here on earth, schvitzing heady mindful practice at the guidance of a video rental on the subject he got for a buck-sixty-one down at video review on lawndale boulevard
and the sea, she is whispering sixty-one
and the old-growth forests are burning alive on tee-vee sets
and sixty-one hills and valleys busy shedding their stubborn
botanical growth as the great gab-smacked goddess returns with baggies
of dust, of deceit
how does one begin to spell out mother earth?
the way we are all fashion’d from star?
glorious hydrogen oxygen calcium carbon organic,
sent spending the lonely centuries speeding thru milk the
way a baby, rocked gingerly, might burp into
some semblance of
slumber
Jonah Meyer is a North Carolina-based poet and writer. He’s been published in O.Henry, Ampersand Literary, Carolina Peacemaker, Bohemian Review, American Crises, JAB Poetry, Found Spaces, Cold Lake Anthology, and The Mountaineer. Jonah plays guitar, studies neuroscience, and shoots photography. He is Associate Poetry Editor of Mud Season Review.