Summer
2004
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Summer
2004
| Kenneth Pobo |
| DOORKNOB
EMPEROR |
|
Mr. Dirmo feared
our sixth-grade germs -
when we’d leave the room
for lunch, he’d coat
the doorknob
with rubbing alcohol.
Mornings
were arithmetic. Afternoons,
Roman history.
He’d stand on his chair
sing arias,
demand applause. Rita
told her dad about
a boy he rolled out
into the hall,
a soccer ball. Word
reached the Board
which did nothing--
the Emperor lived,
holding his doorknob-scepter.
Summer vacation,
the one barbarian
he couldn’t stop
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| Kenneth Pobo |
| THREE
PLANETARY WISHES |
|
All nine planets rock,
but if I could visit three,
I’d choose Mercury, Uranus,
and Pluto.
Freezing on one side,
boiling on the other,
straddle the line
between Mercury’s cold
and heat, are you in
God’s mouth? Who bopped
over gas giant Uranus’s poles?
Enter a methane, ammoniac
garden growing lethal green
flowers. Pluto,
some say, isn’t even a planet.
She’ll always be one to me,
this tease who can crawl
under Neptune’s wire fence
to sidle up to the sun.
Pluto’s moon Charon,
a stone eye watching.
Vacation over,
I’d pine for blue Earth,
her waters and daylilies,
animals and swallows. |
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| Kenneth
Pobo's work appears online at TAMAFYHR MOUNTAIN
PRESS (my chapbook POSTCARDS FROM AMERICA), FORPOETRY.COM,
THREE CANDLES, 2RIVER VIEW, DREXEL ONLINE JOURNAL
and elsewhere. His book INTRODUCTIONS recently came
out from Pearl's Book'Em Press in Atlanta. |
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