2/13/2017 0 Comments Three poems by Kenneth P. GurneySnowflake In Summer Leon drank a quart of stars out of the milky way. He had a half-dozen double-stuff Oreos to wash down. Some of the stars in that quart were segments of constellations where lines are drawn to connect the academic illustrations. All the prognosticators of heavenly inspired horoscopes learned in earnest what thrown for a loop meant. Leon spent an hour and seven minutes on his smart phone search engine trying to determine if the Milky Way was whole, skim or non-fat. Leon then wondered why the Native American Indians did not drink quarts of white men and white women to wash down packages of Dancing Deer Baking Company triple chocolate chip gourmet cookies and return the antelope and buffalo to the great plains. Pregnant Turning forty years old Leon ended up crawling home when balance failed his two feet and his blurred visual acuity sometimes misidentified dog shit as rocks. No one on the streets past bar-time stopped to help Leon home or help him up but one ne’er do well helped himself to Leon’s wallet when Leon crawled into the darkened driveway that leads to his upper apartment. The night birds watched the whole robbery without guilt as they wished the two men to clear the darkened alley so the mice would brave the outdoors on their way toward the dumpster. After the thief jumped back into an idling mustang muscle car Leon pulled himself up on the down spout and his hand started to swell up from an itsy-bitsy spider bite. Leon made it to his porch couch and crashed into the cushions disturbing the sleeping birds in the ivy and dreamed himself pregnant with a tabby cat unaware his body landed upon and nearly smothered a stray enjoying the comfort of the porch couch cushions. I Slew It I slew it. The embroidered dragon in my mind. A simple set of standard stitches undone, undoes what holds me together. I forgot the indoctrination song and the litanies of Tammany Hall politicians. When I thought cleanliness was next to godliness it never occurred to me scrubbing my skin off was a misinterpretation. I slew it. The embroidered touch at the edge of memory. Not by scissors. But by unraveling each repressed neuron at the seam. The golden ratio fails my hands to make a godly instrument. Which song of wool will set the past down in the past as well as virtue. As well as my eyes following a pulse of lights there and back again. ---------------------- Image - Chiara Stevani https://www.flickr.com/photos/stevanichiara/ Bio: Kenneth P. Gurney lives in Albuquerque, NM, USA with his beloved Dianne. His latest collection of poems is Stump Speech (2015). He runs the poetry blog Watermelon Isotope. His personal website is at kpgurney.me.
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