October 3-9, 2016: Poetry from John Reinhart and Lisa Stice

Jennifer Worries

Jennifer worries what her neighbors will
think since the door panel fell off her
car not to mention the car itself, not the
latest model though highly reliable.
She worries about her children
eating dirt, eating worms, eating well
and about their social life without a
passenger door panel. The Joneses
don’t even live on her block and no one
sees them around anyway, yet the
bedtime myth abounds and though the
cold war ended, consumer armament
rages in overgrown boxes, buzzing like
new packages of bees at the post office,
waiting for freedom. She just quit her
job because life is too short and her
kids are still young and now she worries
about life with four chickens, two
children, one income, and a reliable
car with no passenger side door panel.

(First published in The Vocabula Review)

Backyard Play

this was different
from where they came
so they built defenses

walled cities
of empty shoe boxes
the piling up of pine cones

they went into a corner
talked about it together—
this strange place

as she petted his back
as he turned to lick her cheek
they forgot to be frightened

*some words borrowed from “Chapter VII in which
Kanga and Baby Roo Come to the Forest, and Piglet
Has a Bath” Winnie-the-Pooh by A. A. Milne (“Nobody
seemed to know where they came from, but they were
in
the Forest,” “went into a corner,” “forgot to be frightened”)
and from “Attacks by Stratagem” The Art of War by Sun Tzu
(“walled cities,” “the piling up of mounds”)

Because Everything Else Is Quite Unequal

The goats push begging noses
through chain link
…………………………you ration
out alfalfa pellets
…………………………let them
receive their fair shares
from your upturned palms.

*part of the title is borrowed from “Attacks by Stratagem”
The Art of War by Sun Tzu (“quite unequal”)