A Jackass Tells a Story about Rivers
A Jackass Reads Breaking News
Ghost Ballad
Wait for Morning
The Business Section by Edith Hamilton
Celebrating: A Prayer
Plastic Contents of a Seabird's Stomach
Small Talk
The Slick
What's the Word For—
Wherever You Can Find One
Last Laugh
A Jackass Tells a Story about Rivers
Tell a story about rivers, they said,
and of a thousand rivers—dreamed & real—
I am in one, amniotic & amnesiac,
dragging drunken feet through
three feet of water a half mile to the
lake where there is a bonfire,
a beach party on Lake Michigan
in Michigan where a certain brand
of person can only enjoy the lake
by tearing it apart with motors,
but these weren’t those people. Oil
and tires didn’t tell the stories of their day.
Deep night turned its blind eye to the beach & the bottles.
A guitar and a radio, and nobody caring about
competing notes that floated & banged
across & around each other before
reaching for the pines past the dunes and
the stars past the world. She started talking to me
and talked some more until she touched. This was one
of those times a lifetime ago when lives overlapped,
an intersection of rivers.
Say what you will about the brutalism of streets,
at least they tell you where to go—
signs command ONE WAY or STOP.
The warm waters just say stay, stay.
The currents make only suggestions.
I stumbled back, splashed through the river,
feet through dark muck, dissipating.
There is a headline on a news
site today declaring
“Who inspired this celebrity’s new
tattoo?” that might
as well have said
“Hoo boy, you’re old”
because I have no idea
who the pictured celebrity is
or why I am supposed to care about the tattoo.
There are two hundred
or so other crises happening now,
entire peoples and nations at risk,
a nuclear reactor on the brink
& a glacier dribbling down the sink.
But the tattoo earns a headline
beside them all.
It’s a little heart,
by the way.
Yes, this is attention paid to fame instead of future,
but I can’t help but wonder
who merits this little inked heart
on someone’s skin,
who is loved
today.
an upright piano with no lid
sits by the side of the road
a hundred yards from the lake.
it is sun-bleached & warped
with no 90° angles—
the wood bending & curving like
the nearby trees. its sprung wires
grow long & reach out to twine
with the thin curious branches.
rainwater drips off what keys
are left as the piano groans in the strong
winds dragging behind the storm.
come by—
it is yours if
you want it,
this piano sitting by the
side of the road, playing
dead music in the breeze.
A cold front
came through today
dissolving the viscous heat
one jumbo raindrop
at a time, until the air had holes in it
big enough to breathe through again.
I grabbed the spade & leaned it
against the backdoor.
I pulled up a stool
next to my brown dog,
cracked a sweating beer can,
and waited for the rain to tire
and head on.
I sat, ready to bury
unborn memories
in the loose,
damp
soil.
The Business Section by Edith Hamilton
Some alien archeologists will sift through
and review what we left behind,
will determine that Nike somehow
beguiled the people and survived,
that Nike stood for a time as the last
of the Old Gods, exalted with offerings,
praised on billboards, honored
with temples in holy centers.
They will study how gods came & went,
how a new pantheon fluctuated with
quarterly returns, projections, and The Market,
how Wall-Street white boys launched new gods
to the altar on daily whims. Worship was constant,
no desire for a Sabbath. We said praise be constantly to
McDonalds & Verizon, Microsoft & Visa, Budweiser
& Disney, Coca-Cola & cars cars cars.
And really, how nice of people,
they'll say, to smooth
the transition back
to the heavens
by making
the apex
deity of
the day
an apple
with a bite
taken out of it.
Glowing, staring,
watching everything
we meager humans did
from its mountain of coins.
We listen to James Brown
sing about being proud.
We listen to Stevie Wonder
sing his song for today & we
eat a cake Mama baked
that says “HAPPY BIRTHDAY,
MLK!” in blue frosting
that becomes blue lips.
We go to the library; we make
signs: “With Liberty & Justice
FOR ALL” and “We love you!”
And “PEACE.” We
march & when horns honk
we cheer & when we complain
about being tired
we compare a quarter-mile
to the distance
between Selma and The World.
Back home, we hoop, whoop, &
wrestle in the family room
until your little bodies
tire & we flop on our backs,
heads under the big window,
catch our breath, and
laugh in slow gasps
as we watch fat flakes
meander down from
clouds, the snow about
to cover our heads
but never touching us.
Plastic Contents of a Seabird's Stomach
• Bread-bag clip, green (1)
• Broken bits of water bottles, including a chunk of cap from the bottle you fiddled with too much at that one job interview (12)
• Unidentified objects, brownish (7)
• Tines from single-use forks we used for Jenny’s birthday party at work (3)
• Unidentified objects, yellowish (11)
• Beads from that microdermabrasion facewash you bought a few years ago that washed down the drain & through the sewer system to the water & down the fishes’ gullets who in turn went down the bird’s gullet (27)
• Cellophane wrappers from packs of gum (number unknown, just sort of amorphously everywhere at once)
• Pieces of the straw from your mega-Coke at the boffo opening weekend of Armageddon in 1998 (3)
• Unidentified objects, dead gray (7)
• Bits of to-go cup lids (5)
• Yogurt cup fragments (6)
• Unidentified objects, a sickness green (3)
• Souls (number unknown, just sort of amorphously everywhere at once)
It sure is great to
have this 50º weather
in January!
she said.
It seems like there used
to be more snow
around in March,
she said.
Yeah, it didn’t used to be
90º for the Memorial Day
parade, did it?
she said.
Nah, I’m staying in the
air-conditioning. I’ve seen
the fireworks before,
she said.
They ended up canceling
them anyway. It was too dry,
she said.
I don’t think the kids have ever
worn shorts with their Halloween
costumes before, do you?
she said.
In November, her sweat-slickened hand lost grip on the pen she used to cast
vote after vote for the same party her people had always claimed as identity.
Ugh, the line
was sooo long, but
it’s important to vote,
you know? It’s our
duty. It’s our
American right,
she said, dripping.
The American
flag—too large
for its pole—whips
in the wind,
flapping its
faded & fringed
stripes at the gas
station below, its
needy tatters
waving hello to
all who stop to dose
on oil.
A muskrat looks up
from the runoff bank
between here &
the exit ramp—it
drops an empty Doritos
bag and retreats back
to the murk. Its dive
leaves rainbow eddies
in the sheen atop
the green water as
a Snickers wrapper floats
nowhere.
thinking you’ve seen a murmuration in the distance
but it was just a cloudy belch, emissions
from a cement truck. You thought smoke was starlings,
but we don’t really have birds
anymore
do we
YES
JESUS LOVES YOU
the church sign says
as it drips rain
five miles north of Detroit
in so-much-warmer-than-it-should-be
December.
Hey—Jesus works at Starbucks!
You say this aloud in revelation.
He just made me this latte,
you say to yourself—
see, he intervened when
an older fella in front of you said,
It’s my birthday, my email says I get a free drink?
but the lady at the register said,
This card is expired, sir—do you maybe have
a different one connected to that email account?
And the old man stared, mouth open, furrowed brow & matted hair.
No hesitation, Jesus on espresso detail said
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, SIR. Your drink is on me,
and made the man a drink. Just reached over,
hit something on the register, said
It’sall good. It’s your birthday.
and made the man a drink.
Jesus handed the man his cup
& the man left, warm.
Jesus pulled his Santa hat down over
his short afro &
tilted it just enough.
The bar might be low these days
for miracles, but we’ll take them
where we can get them.
You’ll take a Jesus wherever you can find one.
This Jesus just smiles when you say
Thanks for doing that for him, for that man. Thanks—
and he hands you your cup.
Jesus just smiles, gives you a nod,
fills the next one up
as you return
to the rain.
The gas pump talked at me this morning. It
warned of war. It said bombs could fly at
any moment. Forget your books & classes,
says our society. Forget your learning,
says our culture. We’d rather repeat our
history over and again, hugging
the known no matter how horrible.
I maneuver our horseless carriage over
rivers and through the memories of woods
and past strip malls and the ghosts of woods and
by fast food and the phantom limbs of woods
to a Christmas party, toward the memories
my boys will hold when they take their own
nuclear crews to maybe my house if
I make it that far. If we make it that far.
I know more than most gas pumps. I’m older now,
I’ve gained wisdom. Like when people say He
who laughs last, laughs best but I know that’s bullshit—
nobody’s really last because laughs pass,
contagious, like how now at the party
I have a warm drink that may or may not
have a smidgen of whiskey dolloped in
it, and I laugh like my father laughs and
my grandpa laughed—and that was the only
day of the year my grandpa laughed, but he
did, for that day—but now the gas pump asks.
Will my boys laugh like I do and their kids
like them? After the gas pumps tell the dusty
air of the fires? Will my future brood scavenge
from our endless dumps, will they huddle under
crumbled bridges and in hulking frames where
offices used to be, will they take time
for one day per year, at least, to be with
family however they define that
and laugh?
Mitchell Nobis is a writer and K-12 teacher in Metro Detroit. His poetry has been nominated for things by Whale Road Review, Nurture Literary, and Exposition Review and has appeared in many other great publications. He facilitates Teachers as Poets for the National Writing Project, hosts the Wednesday Night Sessions reading series, and co-founded NAWP. Find him at @MitchNobis (various platforms) & mitchnobis.com or falling apart on a basketball court.
