SPACKER PACKING
I’m 33, not a happy ending
kind of guy. Neither are you.
Alive now, decay later.
Why turn to ash in a town
that should have burned
to the ground long ago?
I have no destination,
maybe Tennessee, it’s got mountains
so good I could lick them
like gravy off a plate. If
moonlight shines at a good angle,
I’ll stay there, for a while. I have
little to pack, hardly enough
to strain my back. My Aunt says
I’ll regret leaving. I may.
I regret a lot. For now,
home will be acceleration,
the windshield leading me
straight ahead until curves dip.
I’ll crumple the map,
toss it out of the window.
NOVEMBER 1981
In a Cadiz, Ohio motel
that the owner said Clark Gable
had stayed in when it first opened.
I wonder if the King slept
in Room 17 where I watch
Joan Crawford in Rain.
Did his ghost get caught between
channels? When I run
the bath tap, brown water
slops out. No shower towels.
The amenities meet down
the street at the Holiday Inn.
I wake around three a.m.,
see a silhouette against a scrim.
It’s him, I know it is,
no crown, a sad guy trying
to light a cigarette
in heavy wind.
GRANDFATHER OTT MORNING GLORY
At parties
Grandfather shows up
in a deep purple tie,
ready to dance. Every
family has one,
I’m told, the pesky
relative who won’t
take a hint. Give him
a wall and he crawls it.
Give him a trellis
and he sprawls,
this Grandfather who
takes the cake
I just took out of the oven
to a cloud closet,
locks the door,
eats every sweet crumb.
Kenneth Pobo has a chapbook coming out this summer from Spruce Alley Press called When The Light Turns Green. His work is forthcoming in: Weber: The Contemporary West, Floating Bridge, Mojave River Review, Profane, and elsewhere.