Emily Dickinson
was four
feet tall.
Tourists can
visit the
room
in which
she wrote
her poems.
Most of them
have to
duck
passing thru
the doorway.
Next to
her desk
is a
mannequin
wearing her
favorite dress.
People stroke
it &
marvel.
They wish she’d
taken more
pictures.
Filed under poems & short jabs
When you’re in
chronic pain
for eight
years running
your
smile changes.
Filed under poems & short jabs
The happiest
I’ve ever been
was when at
the age of
46 I
quit drinking
boxed up
my books
put my
typewriter
on a
high shelf for
two years &
gave all my
running trophies
& medals to
an artist
couple who
made an
outdoor sculpture
out of
them which in
nothing flat
the weather
reduced to
tattered cloth &
chipped paint.
Filed under poems & short jabs
He was an
elderly gentleman
in a
gray suit
wearing a
hat with a
feather in it
sitting parked
in one of
those hybrid
cars about
as big as
a shoe box
& when a
car full of
teenagers
cruised by
shouting obscenities
& making
lewd gestures
out their
rolled down
windows he
fired up
his engine &
gave pursuit.
They pulled over
after a
block or
so &
so did he
& when
three of
them got
out &
started back
toward him
he got out
too with a
sawed-off shotgun.
“What the
fuck do
you think
you’re going
to do
with that,
old man?”
one of them
said &
continued on
toward him,
not the
first mistake
he’d made
that day
but definitely
the biggest.
Filed under poems & short jabs
If you’re a
field mouse
you’re
hawk food.
If you’re a
child in
Afghanistan
you’re
drone food.
Filed under poems & short jabs
Bukowski &
Bogart both
imitated
W.C.
Fields’s voice
but neither
of them
could juggle*
worth
a damn.
Filed under poems & short jabs
