Jon Wolston's Poetry Archive

Stalin comes in my office with a hangnail. Right off the bat there’s confusion over his medical chart on account of his new name. We get that straightened out, but his damn flowergirls out in the waiting room won’t stop crying. Thank God for those old lollipops in the bottom drawer. No sooner do they shut up than the next thing you know my nurse is telling me he’s insisting the thermometer should go in his armpit. I give in and let him have his way with the mercury. I had to really bite my tongue because he was starting to get to me–you know, a really controlling guy? What I wanted to say was, “Hey Joe, that may be how they do it in Siberia, but this is the Ocean State!” But I had the good sense to keep it to myself. Instead I tell him the joke about the Red Army doing tonsillectomies through the rectum because everybody keeps their mouth shut over there. Now a regular joe would think that was a hoot! In fact it’s one of my top icebreakers. Well this goes over like a lead balloon with Mr. Big! The thermometer falls right out of his armpit! Boy was he hot. My nurse notices it too, and said we should concentrate on his hangnail. He said it had been bothering him since Yalta. So I patch it up in no time, along with a few paper cuts, and send him on his way. He calms right down and said he felt like a new man. The flowergirls were on the phone seeking asylum, but one look from Uncle Joe and they hightailed it out of there. I waved and said, “Next!”.

Tired of turning blue as slate
my soul came up for air.
The wreckage of the Pequod
lay tangled in my hair.

I combed out Captain Ahab
and that gold coin from the mast.
I can’t find Stubb or Starbuck.
Things are happening pretty fast.

Got harpoons in my eyelids,
seaweed in my ears.
You’ll have to listen for me,
I’ve been under all these years.

Down at the Fairgrounds–
a bio of Howlin’ Wolf,
applecake chaser.

Click on the “Books” and “Reviews” pages for news about my third collection, due out this fall.  Entitled “Two Tars,” it explores the psyche’s shadowy archipelago of fear and death 🙂

Off to a slow start.
This heart wall’s a doozy.
Three fawns on the dump road.

On the road at eight.
Rain all the way to Hampton.
Six dogs in the truck.

A trapped emotion of horror
drains from my oropharynx.
A sneeze disperses jealousy–
ambient beads
into a fist.

Lighter, I write.
A deep deep breath
a wider world.

Philip Levine mingles
in a baseball cap before his reading,
looking like he’s there for Grand Friends’ Day
at Moses Brown.

An amiable urbanite,
he takes his time
and patiently fills us in.

His hands are dirty
but his clothes are clean,
and he doesn’t shy away
from too much, like saying
what love is
from the perspective of a nautilus
or a juicy ornge.

Trust me.
That’s ear spelling.

He hears poetry in the spoken word
and the shipping records
of the last century.

We’re glad he’s well and
loves our words
our whole country of words
so fruitful.

Troy’s slack skin
slides under my fingers.
He’s out for the count
whatever that means,
his ribs aligned like ridges
on the sandy marge of a brackish delta.
If I were younger I could smell him too.

When he wakes up
I feed him a Tums for his tear stains.
My wife has her shirt on inside out.
I thought it was maybe the style.

He puts up with me
like flypaper does.

Who am I to be the judge?
He dons his robes with
silent eloquence
and instructs the jury
for me.

I smell like a lunchbox
found in the back of
an orange school bus
and left unopened too long.

I wish I could stand up
like that famous black lady,
what’s her name?
Guess I have it backwards though.