Scott Beal is one of my favorite friends that I haven’t met yet. We became pals through the magic of 30/30 (Every April! Everyone writes and posts a poem a day! It’s like poetry Christmas. Is it weird that I’m already excited?), exchanged mixes, and now we’re poetry pals 4life.
Relationship Tips from Us Weekly
I could use a deep slice from the lid of a cat
food can to bring home how I hate working
with one good hand to stanch the screw-up
of the other. I need to lose a pint
of beer into the disposal to show my throat
how to work through its thirst. A better vandalism
to inhabit my bathroom and punch out the mirror
I’ve fogged to blindness practicing apologies on,
and burglars to fence the shards back to me
as gems. A canteen to lug over dunes
between the couch and the bed after my mouth
meaning to speak softly has again spit sand
from my grinding teeth. I need to teach
my throat to swallow in the midst
of your magazine story I have worked so hard
to edit myself out of and once the cats are fed
back into.
Relationship Tips from Leviticus
“If a man lies with a woman and there is an emission of semen, both of them shall bathe in water and be unclean until the evening." ―Leviticus 15:18
Miss, I believe we've had an emission.
Yep.
A fine mess this is.
I'll perform the prescribed purifying rites
on the sheets while you draw the bath,
though water will not be enough, water
is merely a way to start the clock
for our uncleanness to lift by evening.
So you might as well add bubbles
to the bath, and bring the luscious sponge,
and bring the Penthouse Forum and the rest
of that merlot. And before we venture
forth and multiply the gestures and flows
that landed us here, let us toast
the implausible success of the author
of every letter that begins “I never thought
this could happen to me,” the miracle
arriving despite his lack of faith.
Scott Beal’s poems have appeared recently in Indiana Review, Dunes Review, The Legendary, and in a split book with Rachel McKibbens and Aracelis Girmay entitled Jangle the Threads (Red Beard Press, 2010). His first chapbook, Two Shakespearean Madwomen vs. the Detroit Red Wings, was published in 1999 by White Eagle Coffee Store Press. He earned his MFA in 1996 from the University of Michigan. He teaches poetry and fiction workshops at the Neutral Zone (Ann Arbor's teen center) and serves as Dzanc Writer-in-Residence at Ann Arbor Open School.
No comments:
Post a Comment