Soup Kitchen is a monthly showcase of different artistic genres. Please enjoy this month’s feature on some of the finest modern poetry.
Splitting hairs, missing keys, lagging buses, cracking knees,
dog-eared pages, tepid drink, pulling collar, dripping sink,
shrilling phone, stinging bees, roughing silk, mushy peas,
slipping soap, ill-timed blink, sopping sock, missing link,
shattered bowl, pearling tees, empty cans, extra fees,
belly fat, faded tan, twisted straw, senile gran,
drying pen, rainy May, lightless bulb, corded fray,
empty party, traffic jam, burning toast, best-laid plan.
The dominatrixes caress,
the pole dancers affections,
even the nice girls embrace
are not so easy to arrive at
when you’re low crawling
under another man’s ever
abandoned storage shed on
the way to the temp worker
company in mud crust jeans
and torn thrift store jacket
not even the Salvation Army
elderly lady bell ringer will
turn sloughing off a kind smile
The employment office is
as evasive as nomadic
money. Each plastic chair
of welcome is just another
sidewalk of regret. Successful
applicants need collegiality
that works through cocked
pistols and hurricanes, if
you don’t have that, family
or friendly connections will
have to reanimate everything
on black construction paper
David S. Pointer has been publishing social justice poems in the underground for twenty five years.
Helen Picard is a poet who studies history at the University of Toronto’s Trinity College. She has been published by The Spectatorial, Ealain Magazine and Vending Machine Press amongst others.
