3 poems by Jim Maughn

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Not that miracles are unfit for conversations
You know, as above, so blow
Below the body, that one, measured by the water
it displaces
A beeline to the honeybucket truck
Peel away the rind, and what’s below
gets mistaken for inference, suggestive of sexuality.
Plenty is a nice way to put it, it goes
subdermally, swollen like a lymph node
anemic, or did I mean amneotic?
The scaffolding is what you’re wheeled onto
while they build the hospital around.

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***

ONLY NATURAL ENEMY

Sense of being behind walls
and still gripping the lever.

Wait.
We haven’t left the scene yet..

Pavement gets no thinner
between here and the city limits.

Outskirts already scavenged.
Holes fill with shoes

and slaves come to fill their pots
with designer watches.

***



***

P I E

shiver-spanned
ring in a hole

a whole new
angle on our

dish-ran-away-
with-the-spoon

***