Yelling at the Baby
So, your baby is standing up in her crib
clinging to the railing with her chubby hands
and squalling for reasons you can’t figure out,
and Putin has bombed another village in Ukraine,
and Israeli settlers have knocked down
some Palestinian’s small home to build on the same spot themselves,
and there’s a smiling young man on your front porch
with a clipboard and a stack of donation-pledge cards
canvassing for help in fighting climate change,
and a warning light has started flashing
on the dashboard of your 10-year-old Camry,
and the zipper’s stuck on your down jacket,
and your father has been diagnosed with cancer of the jaw,
and you haven’t paid your streaming-service bill,
and now Putin has moved on to bomb another village in Ukraine,
and you’re angry, and wild, and frustrated, and maddened,
and very nearly ready to explode,
but
it doesn’t help to yell at the baby.
~
Life Story
This guy asked his date for a kiss
and she said, “What!”
He applied to eighteen colleges
and all of them said no.
The military told him
he was too skinny to serve.
He bought a Kaypro computer
just before that company stopped making them.
His first wife left him for a woman friend
and they now teach computer skills to the unfortunate.
He fought so much with bosse
she rarely kept a job more than 14 months.
The longest job he had was obituary editor
for a daily paper in New Hampshire.
For three years after he retired
he had to pay his own health insurance.
Counting his pension and Social Security
his income is $2182 a month.
He married again and moved into
his new wife’s duplex home.
She just told him he left the garden hose running
and now there’s water on the basement floor.
So this is what he did:
He went outside and taught his grandson
how to ride a bike.
~
How To Make a Peanut Butter & Jam Sandwich
I – The Consecration of the Host
Release the bread. The bread is Russian lady. Twenty-seven year. Blonde eye. Blue hair. She wait for her whole life to meet a culture guy like you. Why not get together? What say check out this?
II – The Father, Son and Holy Ghost
Lather on the peanut butter. The peanut butter has completed a course on DVDs in which distinguished scientists explain the origins of the universe. She’ll help you understand, in her quiet, unpretentious way, dark matter and all those quantum particles squirreling madly around inside the things we smell and taste and touch.
III – The Soul’s Escape From Sterile Light
Dab on the jam. The jam wants to help you increase the size of your penis. All you have to do is click where it says click here. I know it sounds crazy. The size of your penis? It’s an unworthy concern. And scientific evidence denies it even works. … Still …?
IV – The Tabernacle of the Night
In routine, release.
Not vacancy, but peace.
The prayer without the priests.
In routine, release.
~
Forgiveness Is the Heart’s Big Project
Big bucks and a hard-on
the American Dream
it doesn’t get more basic
the blood in the water that goes with the dream
the stirred-up feeding frenzy
the slashing with the saw-tooth teeth
jaws clamping down
bones crunched into slivers
startled, unbelieving eyes
and then the ballet of the smaller fish
feeding on morsels
in the midst of gushing red.
Afterwards, forgiveness comes.
Forgiveness is the heart’s big project.
The one it saves for last.
~
How To Bag an Elk
Get up close to one and let him lick you.
You’ll taste like salt to him
because of all your sweat and other body fluids.
Elk like salt, so he’ll follow you home.
Don’t do anything around your house to frighten him.
Carry on as you usually do—painting shutters,
reseeding the lawn, replacing roof shingles…
The elk will follow you around to all these jobs.
He’ll want to help, but of course he can’t.
He’s not a human; he’s an animal with magnificent antlers.
Your neighbors will all stare from their yards
or from their upstairs windows.
They’ll send pictures of your elk to friends
in places like Sheboygan or Des Moines.
You’ll be in the pictures, too, because the elk
will follow you faithfully wherever you go,
hoping for another taste of your delicious salt
until it finally grows so old it succumbs
to heart worms or some other elk infirmity.
When it dies what you must do is strip off its hide
and tan it into something like a garment
you can put on over your bare skin
so you can be an elk yourself, and wait
atop some hill for someone salt to come along.
~
Robert Kinerk is the proud author of the longest-running play in Ketchikan, Alaska—The Fish Pirate’s Daughter—onstage since 1966. His newly published novel, ‘Mr. Sweetcheeks in Alaska,’ won an ‘Editors Pick’ distinction in Publishers Weekly. He failed miserably to make an impression at the Eugene O’Neill Festival and at Breadloaf, but he didn’t embarrass himself too much when he workshopped a play at Sundance. He and his wife, Anne Warner, make their home in Cambridge, MA, about halfway between Longfellow’s house and Longfellow’s grave. His poems have appeared in Rat’s Ass Review, Tough Poets, Raven’s Review and elsewhere.