Originally published at Uut Poetry. Available in Treason Cantos: Poems 2014-2017.
1
A shoe fell on my head
and ten other shoes followed its lead.
The first shoe condemned them
and praised me for standing up
after ten shoes to the head.
Eleven, I said, eleven shoes,
and he told me not to politicize things.
2
Against all expectations,
I turned thirty-two
and the glass lid of a pot shattered
across my chest and onto the countertop.
3
I’ve been shouting at my landlord’s lawn all year;
its resolve is only getting stronger.
I blame the selfies and participation trophies,
although no one has ever been clear on why
their car slid off the side of a cliff,
but if anything is guilty, it’s his lawn.
4
Every time I go outside there are politicians
ranting at me, which is normal enough,
but they don’t usually word their rants
as abstract poetry. There is a war on Dada
waged by people who use the methods of Dada
from their iambic towers on the edge of Central Park.
5
On a mountaintop, the beast from the Dark Crystal
cried that I wasn’t paying attention.
I began my ascent, thinking always
that the mountain would be better than the ground,
but all it did was make me hate the ground more
after my inevitable descent into a peanut butter and jelly.