Spiel

 

The poet Spiel: Born out west to decent white farmers the same year the U.S. entered WWII, a creative maverick child who made art which evolved as he matured intellectually through lifestyle changes, leading to considerable national exposure. But in 1996, traumatic life/death illness abruptly halted his career. When his life was spared, he became reticent and for the first time in his life, uncreative—until the spring of 1999—when he unearthed an urge to write, opening the pathway to become the Pushcart Prize contender, devoted author, known for often iconoclastic poems, curiously human short stories, deftly intimate recordings and various and odd bits of visual art published in scores of independent press journals. Learn more about him at: www.thepoetspiel.name

One Last Time

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judicious interrogation


1.
why eat chicken
but refuse the meat
of the abundant sparrow

why grieve the death
of women and children
in war

but celebrate
the slaughter
of seed-bearing men

how does the monkey know
to refuse the peel
of an innocent orange

2.
how much hunger
can you bear
before you sneak

into an old woman's pantry
to rip off
her winter preserves

instead of
eating the heart
of the sparrow

which fouls
the window
above the oven

where she bastes
her last
murdered chicken

_____________
viable still

1.
though she's in jitters
her eyes stare dumb at these dull green walls
as she tries so hard to rub the red of heavy lipstick from her sleeve
actually believing she can dispel that same red red red
of you you you aching in the back of her head
 
2.
even while your joints remain moist
these sterile strangers fragment your body
and by intensely scrutinized priority
distribute your left kneecap
to a high school quarterback in des moines
and they've already got one of your corneas in flight
to an attractive spinster in cape cod
and the other to a used car salesman who fancies himself a poet
along the twisty roads of northern new mexico

while a diabetic woman in orlando who has been on the wait list
for a heart for more than five years
barely misses winning yours because
according to the greater priority list
a crooked power politician in southern wyoming has beat her out
by a mere three minutes

could it really have been just this morning
when your diana teased you to the very edge of bright's pointe
and you came leaping with such joy to embrace her
that you greeted sky instead
how could your heart and eyes and one knee possibly be usable
given the mess the mass of your virile body made
as it plummeted to the rocks below

3.
she wants a fresh glass of water now and complains it is this dull green room
that makes her head ache while the nice cop tells her what the jap
tourists saw and did not hear and how she flashed her lipsticked red
nipples at the split second when you reached that precipice
then how she threw her foot in front of yours and how odd it seemed
she did not scream as you disappeared beyond the cliff
yet she was instantly prepared with her textphone
to alert the intensive care unit in cheyenne

4.
really now didn't it become a double crime
when sergeant crowley copped a couple of your cr?me-filled chocolates
from the bright red valentine-shaped box diana had given you
just yesterday as he searched your volkswagon in the parking lot
at the pointe hoping he might be the one to find a link to pin this heinous
act on those dirty lying japs because it was the japs
who shot his father down in world war two
and nobody saved his daddy's heart for nobody

____________
the insistence of light


            no one knows how long the basement tv has been turned on no one knows how long it's been since anyone has been down there it's three a.m. channel 21 is tuned to seinfeld's soup nazi episode the screen is covered with magnetic dust & cobwebs the picture would barely be visible if anyone actually bothered to sit down on bob's cumbersome cast-off gold recliner to try to look at it

            six of the seven sets in the household are on

            bob & verna have been fighting for hours about how they will pay for ginny's ballet lessons when she finally reaches kindergarten the argument had begun over the dinner table while they were watching seinfeld the zillionth replay of the episode where kramer knocks a titleist golf ball into the blowhole of a whale

            they've remained combative & restless so they are tuned into leno on channel 72 for the second time tonight they are stiff as boards they wish there was more space separating them as they stare at the ceiling nearly falling off the far sides of their queen-sized bed three-and-a-half-month-old ginny is undisturbed in her crib verna is considering going back to work as a programmer tho she knows this will cause another fight because bob likes to think of himself as the single breadwinner
            
            anyone driving by their home would assume the whole jensen family is still up and about blaring light is cast out onto the street by the sixty-four-inch widescreen in the family room which bob built to bump up wall-to-wall with his new four-car-garage the jumbo set has been on continuously since the day they bought it to watch the world series more than two years ago right now seinfeld is on channel 5 the show where kramer gets fried in his hot tub the room is so bright you could read a mini-bible without your glasses & from bob's workshop at the back of his special dream-porsche garage a noise like a hummingbird pestering your ear buzzes from h is little black-and-white tube channel 11 has signed off & there's nothing but a bluish light on the screen at six a.m. the american flag will begin to wave in the wind & the national anthem will play

            mrs. nelson next door has to put up with it every morning as she studies her daily prayer book she finds it so irritating but she is too christian to mention it to bob who sometimes helps her open those difficult lids on bottles of urgent medications & besides that he always scrapes her walks when they are buried in snow but no one knows she goes to her closet to pray his shop tv will burn out

            judy has fallen asleep upstairs at 8:30 with her tv knob turned to channel 32 she dozed off dreaming of one day becoming a cheerleader tho it'll be another two years before she'll be eligible to try out & knowing good & well that she will probably lose out to sandra pearl because of sandra's implants she woke up to go potty at 12:10 & as she lay back down noticed the seinfeld episode was on where he gets chased down the street by an old lady because he has ripped off her loaf of bread judy became enchanted with jerry's narrow mouth & imagined it with a fre nch cigarette dangling then watched the rest of the show it was so funny then she spent a couple of hours worrying about the stand-up speech she was supposed to deliver in front of the whole class tomorrow about dolphins & autistic children she sort of prayed her mom would never find out she traded tiffany wilcox her good black wool sweater to write the speech for her she knew she needed to get up early to fix her hair better she wished it was not so mousy brown it looked ok in the light of the tv she wished jerry lived across the street & he would kiss her on her lips and by 3:00 a.m. she is back in lala land

            her brother billy is sleeping on a wet spot across the hall the dirty movie he swiped from vern tibbets ended five hours ago there's nothing but snow on the screen he prefers to sleep with a little flicker of light in his room when he wakes up he will wish he was flat dead & rotting in his grave like he wishes every school day sometimes he pretends he is dead when he is in biology class he thinks it would be cool to get dissected if angela carlino would put him back together again & she was forced to touch his thing he has rubbed judy's face in the fact that he hates seinfeld except for the one where they had a contest about not jacking off he started to tell about it at the dinner table but bob hit him on the back of his head with a fortune 500 magazine when billy was seven he caught bob jacking off in his shop bob told billy he had a sore peter & he had to piss the pus out & ever since then billy's peter seems to get sore a lot & to tell the truth he would watch the seinfeld show about jacking off again if he knew when it was going to be on he will watch vern tibbets' dirty movie again as soon as he gets home from school tomorrow it's not a very good movie but it gets the pus out of him he likes to leave the snow on the screen even when he is away from his room because he believes it protects all his stuff

            verna has never plugged in the nine-inch set that bob & the kids bought as a birthday gift for her to use in her laundry room she's buried it beneath a huge stack of dumb old church clothing she means to dump off at the goodwill store one of these days behind that smelly stack is the only place she can seek some peace & quiet sometimes she locks herself in the laundry room leaves the lights turned off & turns on the empty frontload washer & drier just for some constant rhythm in her life then she sits cross-legged on the floor sniffing the moldy stack & jams pretzels into her mouth a handf ul at a time with that compensated grin like your first homerun
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