Look. Shiny.

Let me first distract you with this Terry Hummer poem, then a new draft of mine written Wednesday and Thursday. There's just not enough time to draft very far when it's a poem a week. What you've been getting here are the raw, sweet meats. Maybe later I'll post the revisions I've done.


Olive Bread

He needed flour, so he pawned his trumpet.

He needed salt, so he sold a pint of blood.

In an alley near the market, a stockbroker bought

his wristwatch. It was raining, and the pantry roof

Had sprung a leak. He counted his loose change slowly,

standing in the shadow of a newsstand, next

To the New York Times and the hulk of a gutted Volvo.

He read the headline. Thunder. The air tasted of gasoline.

He needed water. And olives--good black Greek ones cured

in their own oil. But where the hell

Can you get such things in the middle of a war zone?

There was a remote golden color in the sky

He'd never seen there before. When the smoke cleared,

the city yielded a poisonous odor of yeast.

T.R. Hummer
from Useless Virtues

_______

Lightning Over Walgreens

A lone shopping cart’s chrome
flashes. For weeks nothing’s
changed. But now August’s fist
closes and the city
takes it on the chin. All
of us sucker-punched, down
for ten. Outside, the clerk
flicks her cigarette, coughs,
yells at the drunk pissing
into bushes behind
the dumpster. I leave my
quarter for a paper.
Front page: A tree, a noose
and no one cares waitress
pay is only two bucks
an hour. We all do what
we can. Traffic piles up.
Rain falls. The drivers stare,
wait for the light to change.