Pond Scum
Where they came from,
pond scum was a delicacy
to be served as a side dish
with roadkill, toad stool
mushrooms & raw leaves
of rhubarb or for a special
night sitting around before
the brand new black & white
tv stolen from an out of town
CVS store, that old time
favorite family dish of road
pizza with melted pond scum
on top & a healthy coating
of grated animal feed pilfered
from a badass guard dog
with an attitude,"Hell," he sd.,
"if animals can eat it & live to
a ripe old age than so can we.
We're all animals underneath,
aren't we?" An argument,
under the circumstances, that was
so persuasive, it was impossible
to refute.
Bow Hunter
He's got this bow-
not exactly a competition
one but something useable
for hunting-not big game
actually, but carp-
as in fish-night fishing
actually-in a boat with
flashlights-big flashlights
with lots of batteries-
I suppose you could club
the sukers if , for some
reason, you couldn't land
them yourself with the line-
after a few years you get
real good at it-so good he
sank the boat once after
overloading it a mite too
much-probably cost him
first prize in the contest
as you can barely count
fish once the boat has gone
under-of course it wasn't
just fish on board-he might
have had a few cases of
beer and some homemade
shine on board-that stuff's
been known to influence
the way a man thinks and
what he does after awhile
and there's no reason to
suggest our man was an
exception to that rule
You're never alone with an elbow to bend"
after lines by Eileen Myles
though the face
in the back
bar mirror
staring back
at you
might disagree
"There is nothing we would not kill
with our appetites"
after a line by Lise Goett
Even ourselves
Especially ourselves
The Metro
after Kristen Day
seems like a well lit interior
of a long recurring nightmare,
subway cars lit by overhead
neon, a surrealist's canvas
for pantomine artists to
perform on, leaving their seats
to walk taut tight roped lines
over high arched seats circus
clowns in black face are watching,
showing their approval by shooting
trick pistols that eject floral
arrangments, India inks, rainbow
colored tassels trained spider
monkeys retrieve, returning party
favors and donations to blind
hurdy gurdyists dressed as bellmen
in ill-fitting suits many sizes too
small for the onerous duties of
respooling player piano rolls, aligning
holes with proper spikes for making
music, suggesting a Future fortune
tellers divine in fish bowls using
the last of the artificial light for
illumination, for inspiration now that
the train is nearing the end
Self Portraits
for Sylvia
There are no pictures
other than
Portraits of the Artist as a Young Woman
to grace two slim volumes
of poems-
a novel she thought a trifle-
incidental pieces stories
critical reviews
and more letters and attendant
journals than most writers
amass in
two lifetimes-not including what
her husband burned to spare
the children-
himself-the pain of knowing-
imagining what motivated her
last self
portrait-the one that forestalls
aging and all that comes
with it that
Portrait of the Poet with her Head in a Gas Oven
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Alan Catlin has been tending bar in the semi-legendary Washington Tavern in Albany New York for longer than he cares to admit and for more time than most of the people he works with have been alive (roughly twenty two years) He's been publishing for over twenty five years and recently published The Leper's Kiss, fourth volume of the Killer Drink series available from Four Sep or from the author.
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