LAS VEGAS
Ever since my doctor stopped filling my 40s
sometimes brah I just pace around this house.
Sometimes I gotta let off some steam. She’s got
all these grandkids here every weekend. Middle
of the night I get up every night for the quiet,
five cigarettes and five Twinkies. And sometimes
I do crosswords but unless the word is “drooling”
because that’s like all I’m doing. Divorce ain’t
worth it. Last old lady had the sheriff kick me out
of my own damn house my grandma left me.
Middle of the night I took a flashlight over and
sabotaged the place—AC lines and all. That was
twenty-five years ago. Seems like tomorrow.
This one haven’t kissed her in over a year—
gotta grab her face and pull it to me just to
graze her. Sometimes I wonder if I got five
years in me. And one day I seen that thing
in Vegas and it’s like, I mean, that’s like
a tension reliever. Like, what’s the word?
Not saying I’d do it I’m saying you gotta admit
brah—penthouse high-rise, smash the windows,
like aiming at a postcard fifteen feet away, real
people scrambling like you stepped on an anthill,
barely move the barrel—you can’t see that? Ha
man I’m joking quit being so serious. Hit this.
Let’s go to the shed and I’ll show you where
I keep the birthday present I got myself. Molded
after a real pornstar. Ever heard of Tiffany Mynx?
—from Rattle #63, Spring 2019
Tribute to Persona Poems
__________
Brock Guthrie: “I got the idea for a series of monologues, like this one, from that hideous Trump Access Hollywood tape. Like anybody, I’ve heard people say some troubling things, and over the years I’ve written some of it down. So these grew out of an itch to do something with that material. Readers are used to hearing disturbing voices like these in stories and novels, but rarely do we hear them in poems. That seems unfair. Anyway, I hope I’ve balanced my creative desire to animate this lowlife with a need to understand, tentatively, why he’s like this.” (web)
