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Everyone Talks During the Bass Solo
……………………………………………—Billy Collins, “1960”
It sounded like, “Che ate Pat’s grandma”!
And I’m like…. Before I forget, the “Check Engine”
light came on again. And now “Cruise Control”
keeps flashing. For some reason I never noticed
Joanne won’t let anything go. Where do you think
those two came in from? Another Scotch rocks?
This time last year we had no idea. I miss seeing
smoke curling up past a bass player’s face.
Remember the guy from the gallery? Broke,
that’s why. The Knicks couldn’t buy a bucket.
I don’t know how she functions. “Yeah,” he says,
“if I hear that son of a bitch, bitch one more time….”
So I was thinking we could cancel that. God,
they grow up so fast. But it is what it is.
We should order something. I love how
the sax player just leaves. When is Christmas
this year? Couldn’t keep up. Oh, cats
are easy compared to dogs. Too funny.
Something to do with his fucking brother’s
mother-in-law. On a good day, under an hour.
No way! Way. Whatever, my ass. I just like
a tune with words. Another Scotch rocks?
Watch, he’ll barely cue the band. In college,
Nineveh clever ought the ender pike gist.
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by D.R. James
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……………………—first published in Verse-Virtual, October 2017
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D.R. James has taught college writing, literature, and peace-making for 35 years and lives in the woods near Saugatuck, Michigan. Poems and prose have appeared in a variety of journals and anthologies, his latest of eight poetry collections are If god were gentle (Dos Madres Press) and Surreal Expulsion (The Poetry Box), and a microchapbook All Her Jazz is free and downloadable-for-folding at the Origami Poems Project. www.amazon.com/author/drjamesauthorpage
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