052317

old poems
published in out-of-the-way places
still taste as sweet

reprinted poem

Segmented Worm Defense League


So many enemies;
bird, vole, salamander,
angler, captain of industry,
cruelly misnamed worm snake,
and the burrowers from within:
bacterium, protist, fungus;
they need protectin’!

They meet regularly,
dream of dominion,
pass resolutions,
raid fishing holes,
picket garden fences,
swap genetic material.

Maybe the league itself
is in segments.
(one for grass raising,
one for nematode relations,
one predator, one prey,
bylaws and soil amendments,
and so on)
and has no prejudice
against the worms that are
undivided wholes.


The end


Publ. Fuhu, 2005

reprint nanofiction

https://twitter.com/7x20/status/14354862267

an oldie

Who among us?


The speech is oppressive and leaden,
An expanse of few words,
yet these gravid, weighty,
spilling across our laps like hot stew.

The servitors are mute but eloquent:
We're not human, they seem to say,
as they move seamlessly through our lives.
They have other lives, infinitely rich, beyond our sight;
beyond our comprehension.

We, not they, are the intruders;
we, not they, vainly seek enlightenment
in the hollow night.


Reprinted from "hunger," a 1996 chapbook

poem reprint

Sister sausage

behind the locked door
oozed another one of Bob's
"experiments"

The end

Reprinted from DN and a chapbook, "I don't know what you're having," 2005, Sams Dot Publishing, in print; available from The Genre Mall.