Kenneth Pobo

Bitter

Walking home from
the depot, almost midnight
on a January Thursday,
a red-faced

STOP shivers. A frost
hairnet covers tree tips.
Leafless, do trees enjoy
the bitterness I curse?
Oh, for bark

instead of a parka. Trees
watch spring ride a snowflake's
sleigh. Roots think up
green things to do
in a few months. I slip

on ice, see winter,
a gang closing in,
blocking any escape.

Choices

Coffee perks, the cats perk,
and the sun rubs on its yellow
speedstick. So much to do!
The eye doc, the garden,
and of course work. The paper
plump with entertainment—
two stars got married
secretly. A gay ballplayer
dates models. A war winked
at a politician. I hop in the car
and head to the job--
8 hours of my day turned
into litter. Afterwards I'll
come home, weed, and put on
Helen Reddy or The Tremeloes.
Night will release
convict fireflies from jail.

Barking

A guy on my neighbor
Jim's front porch yells
FUCKIN' FAGGOT!
In Jim's driveway,
a brown truck,
two American flags,
a bumpersticker
UNITED WE STAND,
his German Shepherd
chained all night
to a back yard tree,
barking.

Looking In

One cracked
wood casket
tops another.
Spiders weave.
A cemetery worker
cleans--even death
has standards,
like motels or restrooms.
We leave the dead
to bricks and weather,
return to town--

your hand, love
sunlight blocked
by trees.

Misunderstanding

The guy in “The Raven” who heard
a bird saying “never more!”
got it wrong. Yes, the bird did

come to his chamber door,
it did speak, but it said
“You're a bore!” He misheard,

thought the bird was mocking him.
The raven realized this man
was a yawn, so, after a few more

“You're a bores” she flew away,
past Poe's beautiful dead
Ulalume and Lenore, past

colleges where other profs
seduce undergrads
or write essays nobody would

ever read, and finally, up,
up to clouds, her dark feathers
a roof moving in mid-air.

Kenneth Pobo's work can be found online at: Forpoetry.com, Three Candles, Tamafyhr Mountain Press, Southern Ocean Review, Drexel Online Journal, and elsewhere. His latest book, Introductions, is out from Pearl 's Book'Em Press in Atlanta.