Kenneth Pobo won the 2011 Qarrtsiluni chapbook contest for his manuscript called Ice and Gaywings.
It will be published later in 2011. His chapbook called Contralto Crows is also forthcoming from Green Fuse Press. A chapbook of his micro-fiction, Tiny Torn Maps, is forthcoming from Deadly Chaps. He teaches creative writing and English at Widener University in Pennsylvania.
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Dindi Watching I Love Lucy
I, too, am a “crazy redhead.”
I’d have given Ricky the gate
and taken up with Ethel.
Fred wouldn’t mind. He preferred
boxers. I wasn’t around in the fifties,
but my friend Agnes says I’d have
hated it. Why trick a husband
into letting me into his show?
Why be married if it’s games
and chicanery? Why not just slip
out of the negligee of lies?
Fear of loneliness? I see it here
in Escanaba, women clinging to men
they can barely tolerate
or hate, men who hit them,
get on top of them,
call it love. Pastor saying it’s a test.
From God. Take it
when he strikes you and pray
for him. Gold streets after
worms devour you. And
hands can no longer leave marks.
Dindi Hears
a barred owl
from her open bedroom window—
who cooks for you,
who cooks for you, she seems
to ask. No one. I barely cook
for myself, preferring
a Banquet TV dinner, or,
if tips mount up, Marie Callender.
Mom wishes that I wanted
her recipes. Sometimes I tell her
how I can’t wait to make spaetzle,
stick the recipe in
the glove compartment.
There she goes again, who cooks
for you. If I end up with
a great guy or a great woman
or even an adequate person
who I can get by with,
I might learn to cook.
Something. Mom says
presentation is half the battle.
The owl looks for a mate
as instant as oatmeal.
I know how that sound trails off
at the end. Yet
the bird keeps calling.
Dindi Looking
The diner may close. Who knows?
Empty storefronts
look like frozen lakes. Cold
and wet, today’s a perfect time
to watch Bette Davis tell
kind but drab Joseph Cotten
“If I don’t get out of this town
I’ll die.” Of course we die
whether we get out of town
or not. We wait. Look out
the window. Look harder
so as not to miss something.