WANDAWOOWOO LOUD
I’ve trained my face
to look calm, especially
when fraught. My last lover
said I’m peaceful. It’s funny
how people can stand inside
a volcano and not feel lava
on their feet. The louder we cry,
the closer Death comes—to comfort us,
to help us be quiet
for a long, long time.
WANDAWOOWOO BUYS A CLOCHE HAT FOR $1.99
My grandmother claimed her
cloche hat had magic powers. Grandfather
asked her for a dance,
proposed a month later. Magic?
Not really. A bad marriage
full of extended credit,
extended lies,
extended time
like soggy tuna fish.
The hat made her feel
in style.
She didn’t wear one to church,
Fearing she’d be judged a floozy,
cheap—judgment followed her
around like a dog. Sometimes
when everyone had fallen asleep,
she’d put it on—forks, pans,
and rubber gloves greeted her
in the kitchen—called her the life
of the party, grandfather snoring.
WANDAWOOWOO OUTDOORS
Poison ivy, I only have to breathe
where someone has mowed—
I’m bumps. Still,
I nurture seedlings, water when
July wilts. Blooms give ease,
a peace
that coaxes me to face
a mosquito’s barbed-wire proboscis,
a yellowjacket’s
underground hive--
“No Mercy”
written above the entrance.
WANDAWOOWOO TALKS TO A SPIDER
Pastor Clack calls
God a spider--many-legged
salvation creeps out
of my tub drain. Speaking of
lovers, some were part spider.
I’m good at busting out of webs.
My grade-school crush,
William, would kill spiders
just for fun. He ended up in a web
called a career. Spider,
we can be friends—at a distance.
We both want to survive. We build,
rebuild and wait.
Kenneth Pobo had a book of ekphrastic poems published in 2017 by Circling Rivers called Loplop in a Red City. Forthcoming from Clare Songbirds Publishing House is a book of his prose poems called The Antlantis Hit Parade. He teaches English and creative writing at Widener University. Today he is celebrating the blooming of his first-ever Tahitian Sunrise dahlia.