The New World

Steve — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 19:25:12 +0000

Perhaps you leap off a two-story building
on Tuesday but accidentally live to see
Wednesday. I wonder if a date you weren’t
expecting to meet expects candy when you arrive, or
reservations to the best restaurant in town, or a handsome
cab ride. During dinner, I ask what you
remember from the other side. You say, God sounds
a lot like Sylvia Browne and your life
zip-driven past your eyes. How disappointed
you must have been, surfing through your wonder years
subjected to the redundancy of reruns.
Everyone loves Raymond until Raymond enters his
ninth season and his mother refuses to die.
I’d sometimes like to write myself out
of my own screenplay but I’m afraid I couldn’t pull off the
resurrection. I’m emailing Jesus for tips but
God keeps changing his address.
Every magician has secrets but know I’m hiding
nothing inside this poem. Search all you want.
Each time I’m forced to assume the position it’s the
reading of my rights you always forget, the
anything I say can and will be held against me as
long as the words are round. Al Green was so
tired of being alone he told his guitar who told a trio of
horn blowers who couldn’t keep it to themselves
and thus the Soul was born, out of our deep
need to call something back to our-
selves. I key a new home into the space I caution-taped as
home. I map a flat new world I can conquer
with pestilence, famine, the kind you only survive by
eating the person closest to you.

Anti- » Nathan McClain Poetry 2

The New World