Featured Poet, Issue 3

The Onion Poem I suggest when you have a writer's block start peeling each overlapping line of your poem and create a paper ball that can be fitted inside a tube

of thickened paper also called cardboard, i.e., hardened tubular papier-mâché like those

sophisticated in the French tongue would call it. It goes like this with the first line spelling,

how do cars avoid driving straight to the beach?

Were they to use a metaphor like the abysmal

undulating void it would be so much more poetical.

The next line asks, may a woman lift a car if her child does not wear a seat belt?

The answer is of course she can because that woman

is amazing. It goes on to say that the ugly state of American

politics is easy to understand when you consider

the fact that so few Americans are exposed to murals

of people holding hands. That's because they would consider it oh so much

too gay.

And is it ethical for prenatal testing to tell you if your baby will be too annoying to love. Of course there're a lot of tips to spice up your

sex life but I'll mention only one:

Do it standing or sitting A.S.A.P. because the onion

may not open its heart tomorrow. Just think for a moment that flanked by your tears and while climate change decimates coffee crops I'll be crying deep between the onion skins.

The New Driveway

In my morphemic state of mind I was

a giant. Twice taller than the rest

of the party attending my recently built

alleyway celebratory grand opening.

During the whole process I felt physically

uncomfortable suspecting it was the leftover

scar tissue of the crazy glue that was used

to suture my torso to my lower trunk

that ended being slightly off the spinal center.

No sooner the realization sank into my fire-

water inebriated brain that everything fell

into place. My father, who now has been

dead for thirty years, was standing at

the bottom of my new cobblestone driveway

and was frowning about the poor quality

of the labor. I heard him tell his old friend

Victor Victorovitch standing next to him,

who also died about as long ago, that he

wanted a new contingent of fresh laborers

to repair the botched job.

The funny part was I heard him insisting

that it had to be done real cheap. Of course

what crossed my mind was that you get

what you pay for but I inherited that trait

of his and to this day even in my poetry

I try to get away from being too profound

and like our fake president I blame it all

on our imported alien slave laborers

also called illegal immigrants. Of course

our natives wouldn't work for such vassal

wages since they own casinos nor would

they stoop to spread sand

in the interstices of the neatly laid out

cobblestones. Their time now is more

valuable than doing the rain dance

for the tourists.

#AlexNodopaka