suits me fine,
I want to be loaded,
want God to cast me glances, treacherous
and elegant from beneath the brim
of his pork pie hat as if to say,
“You played with the adversary
as a child, didn’t you?”
I did, God, I did.
We played Steal the Bacon
and explored our unmentionables
behind the gazebo,
sat next to each other
in the School of Second Chances
where all the boys are cuntstruck,
their grinding teeth, the industrial dirge
of red whammies and other wrong answers,
and it’s so boring,
listening to another person’s dreams,
the fata morgana of natural
citizens who commission
army engineers to build
a bridge into the sky, across
which you can always
thumb a ride
to where Dorothy awaits,
blue cornflower riding up,
scissoring thighs,
and the tip of her finger
sheathed in tongue.
Listen:
Matthew Pennock holds an MFA from Columbia University. His poetry has appeared in such journals as New York Quarterly, Denver Quarterly, and Western Humanities Review, among others. He lives and works in New York.
Poet’s Recommendations:
Controvertibles by Quan Barry.
The Patterns of Paper Monsters by Emma Rathbone.
Cranioklepty: Grave Robbing and the Search for Genius by Colin Dickey.
Homepage photo by John Harvey via Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/monkeyc/94743526
