THE BARN
During
A storm
Imitates
The inside
Of an oak tree
How quiet
How dark
How warm
Slow but growing
I like to imagine
The inside of my skull
And a picture of you Up there
Smiling
Smiling at a chrome sunrise
LISTENING TO ROY ORBISON
I simply can’t understand why Elvis
Presley never won the Pulitzer Prize
For Biology
Maybe he did Juan and you
Missed it in the National Enquirer
The week you met Linda Lovelace in Fargo
I looked at the word Sleep in a dictionary
The way I look at a beautiful girl across
The street the morning after a two pint
Tequila drunk at the Bowling Alley
I spoke the word Sleep out loud in many ways
So it would rhyme with leap ripe rip ape
I heard the word Sleep‘s melodious echo
Deep within my ribs & spine
But I was
Still numb Still exhausted Still unable
To sleep for days I spoke When my senses
Wouldn’t work right at all
Memory
The branding iron is memory the cattle prod
About the author:
John McKernan is now a retired comma herder He lives – mostly – in West Virginia where he edits ABZ Press His most recent book is a selected poems Resurrection of the Dust
