Clomping Onto the Porch

recalling the classroom,
            the finger paint, the slick
                        white paper on the pocked,
                                    slanted row of desks, wrought-
                        iron legs underneath
            each curvilinear
chair, sun-shot air, he hears
            his wife at the screen door—
                        oh no! She wants to be
                                    with him as the dew wets
                        everywhere his skin is
            & now he knows what “makes
my skin crawl” means: a slice
            of cowardice & all
                        he wants is that minute’s
                                    reverie, that second’s
                        last (maybe) postponement
            of pain having its way—
funny man! He really
            is funny when he wants.

Three Wasps Dabbed In

Something has so far stopped him/
perhaps what also kept him

this close to the ills that hounded them here
(he mouths the word goddess & just

doesn’t want to burn another hill of incense
nor set off in search of the salmon entrails

the nesting eagles drop along the ridge—
that must be what that reek is, anyway)

where he killed his first millipede since forsaking
the city for what may be good & the loft

(rent control & coffee cooked in a saucepan—oh jeez, yes
they had hot water! Cold-water lofts belong to the time-

out-of-mind when everyone wrote letters that doubled
as manifestos & Thomas Merton couldn’t find

Bangkok if you gave him a thousand dollars, a ticket
to Mount Athos, a Smith-Corona portable

with a hard case & a Buddhist treatise on the uselessness
of guilt) where the cacti still obey the ghost-GI’s

Hände hoch! & the bookcase lies empty of all
but the requisite Cold War

Encyclopedia Americana. Loose, lolloping wind & a shaggy
swale of blueberries! They both hope

(the other one here doesn’t feel like chiming in right now)
the three wasps that dabbed in yesterday morning

don’t portend a sojourn to the feed store
for poison & an unsolicited discourse on the three

best means for broadcasting it. Peace be with
even the gazillion-legged demons

of wainscot & leaded panes. He is rider & ridden, marrow
& drilled-out bone, sorrow & sorrow

forsaken (& so forth). The antenna or satellite
pulled in the first episode of Playhouse 90 right after

they ground their first peanut butter. Live!
the voice-over brayed now that all

but the besmirched urchin pealing Extra! Extra!
are dead. Oh, but he doesn’t need cheering up

now that the crows have resumed bitching. The lone
white pine maybe a hundred yards past

the cistern—well, there it is.

John Repp is a poet, fiction writer, folk photographer, and digital collagist living in Erie, Pennsylvania. Seven Kitchens Press has just published Star Shine in the Pines, Repp’s twelfth chapbook. Signed copies of his chapbooks and full-length collections are available via www.johnreppwriter.com.