poetry packet 2013
TRANSCRIPT
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7/27/2019 Poetry Packet 2013
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Poetry Packet
By Andrew Knox
Published August 13, 2013
40 Hours A Week
Monday
Comes like a disagreeable jarWith a lid that cuts a wide crescent across your palm.
Hold your breath and wrap around it. Gasp and release.
Call it a lousy bastard and give up. Try again.
Tuesday
Time for negotiation, a diplomatic solution,
Asking whoever is around to take a riot at it.If they succeed, its because you loosened it up for them.
If they fail, shuffle away, mumbling curses.
Wednesday
Mama says run it under hot water
For a couple minutes and more,But this only greases the alligator up.
Whatever you do, punch it in the nose.
ThursdayBang it on the edge of the table,
Flick the lid, pray away the friction.
Your uncle is a physics professor. He wrote the textbook.He doesnt answer your call. Fucking time zones.
FridayWake up hungry, desperation setting in.
Realization: go to the knife drawer.
One surgical strike, rapid decompression,Who wants pickled green beans?
Knox / 1
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The Patron Saint of Blood Sugar
You hear me.
I call to you in the middle of the night,From the freezer, down the hall, into your bed,
Singing softly, reminding you that pint of Ben n Jerry's
That cold honey that tastes like cherries and butter,Gets more frostbitten every second
It's not in your mouth.
Doesn't matter what flavor
All variations of silky milk chocolate
Ripples of caramel, chunks of chewy detritus.It's all you ever need. Just one spoonful
has all the good news of 10,000 bibles
and a box of Cheerios. One spoonful.
Can't hurt.
I'm more than just a number
You think gets too high all the time.I only get high
when you can't find a friend
and confide in a Snickers bar instead.
I know I'm no good for you, but
The parts you hate about me are actually
Parts of yourself: Love Handles, HangingFlab,Your dizzy reaction when you realize
You either have too much or too little of me in your life
I'm as holy a ghost
as you'll ever catch.
So you pray to mewith your insulin pen
and tell me to behave
Behave, take it slow.
But you're the one who needs to be managed.
I'm your candy, Girl, and I got you wanting me.
Knox / 2
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Hillside at Hippie School
At age seven
I was sentaway to the mines
to scour for littlewhite rocks we called
quartz.
We were going to
strike it rich
selling rocks for clocks.
But contracts happened
to fall through
on every scheme.
Then the war came.
Pinecone grenades.Spiked pit traps.
Slug-based bio-warfare.Enemy combatants buried
alive under piles of leaves.
Allegiances shiftedfrom recess to recess,
so nobody held
the chain link fence
at the top of the hillside
for more than a day.
This is what I
learned in 2nd grade.
Knox / 3
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7/27/2019 Poetry Packet 2013
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Coho, Sockeye
If I was then as now, I woulda probably won it.
They wait to tell us not to til we already done it.Second Grade Live, recessed with steep hills and pine cones,
leaves in a cyclone used to leave my mind blown.
My childhood was played out, laying out ten stacks,metric towers tall til they fell, show n tell, and then snacks,
sit criss cross apple sauce, made us all equal,
I was bored as dry erase on the classroom easel.Couldn't keep still til they fed me a Benadryl,
felt hella ill, semi-psychoactive pill, what's the deal?
Got bored with that riddle, hadda fidget a little,defenestrated self, coulda been a great escape,
but they caught me by my bootlace, turned me in,
two-faced, dim set, suit case, twin breath...
26 feet left. Constrain the remainder while
I feign a limp step. Office door, in press,
tell secretary why my trouble's their business.Don't need no witness, I'm a usual suspect, preset,
prone at recess to Pandora box a bees nest.
Principal asks me, would I jump off a bridge ifall my friends were lemmings? Irrelevant.
As if my friends would jump just for the hell of it.
I know if I apologize she might be wise to let me go,
but all this time, I've been staring out the windowat all of the things I love outside that make me sneeze.
Imagine the bodies we'll bury with the leaves off the trees!
Knox / 4
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What It Do
It does this every other year.
Bergs form in the middle,branch out and consolidate
and come nearer with each
successive freezing eveninguntil it resembles a thin
sheet in the shape of
Australia upside down.
Fools let their children run free.
We don't know with certaintythat it won't hold their weight
but we holler threats across
the lake just to be safe.
Liability = Fun / Time.I fell in once, when parents
weren't watching but sister was.
Something pulled me in.
The vibe of elastic energy
reverberating through the plateand back to the origin of impact
where the thrown brick left a dent.
The battleship ka-sploosh or the
crinkling fizzle scratched intothe wake of each depth charge.
Ducks in a holding patterncome in for a landing and
skid their landing gear to a
stop. Pools form atop raftsthat break off the continent
and may remain rogue for
a week at best, but it willbe water again before you
know it.
Knox / 5