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  You could have a big dipper   

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.

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