Thursday, August 27, 2009

it’s life and life only - series no. 1 by Regina Green

P1150047

old mr. donovan walked up to my ma

the other day and asked her if she had seen his dog

the one-eyed lazy son-of-you-know-what

that had stolen his pork chop right off of his plate the night before

she said no

old mr. donovan just gave a sigh

looked past her like maybe the dog-thief

was behind her or down the street a ways

he turned to leave

his shadow retreating before he did

my ma watched him- she knew he wasn't really

upset about the pork chop

he just wanted his dog to come home

*


poor mr. knutsen

he went out to get his newspaper

and the mailman found him

his body half on the porch

the other half in the wet morning grass

we wondered what would happen to his cats

and how such a thing like this

could happen to

poor mr. knutsen

*


i used to mow the lawns around my neighborhood

get maybe 5 bucks

and sometimes more if i raked up leaves

crazy old man lockhart would run after me

when i got sort of ornery and mowed in circles

*


my aunt eloise (we always called her

aunt el) told us kids about the time she slept

with the bank manager to secure a new loan

for her and uncle mike's first house

she said she felt bad about it later on

but that sometimes you just had to do things

you weren't very proud of

*


my cousin the great horned toad

(that's what we always called her)

got accepted into some ritzy college and now

it's all we hear about from mom and aunt bess

(the great horned toad's mother)

it's unbearable really

who knew she was that smart

*


our dentist was working his way over

to the AC club and on the way in

he got stung by a bee

not five minutes later he was face down

in his pretzels

that was a sad day

*


i swear, my cousin ray looked exactly

like little joe cartwright and everywhere he went

people would start to hum the bonanza theme song

and some smart aleck would make clip-clopping

sounds with his hands and man, my cousin got so mad

one time he shaved all the hair off his head and got a lip

piercing well that quieted things down a whole bunch

*


a bunch of us neighborhood kids would hang out behind

the old box factory listening to jimi hendrix

we thought all along the watchtower was the best song he ever wrote

then timmy’s older brother told us bob dylan wrote that song

he kinda snickered a little as he turned to leave

*




Walkabout (w/ Panda Bear Noah Lennox). - Atlas Sound


Regina Green is a poet and therapist. She appears in the online literary magazine Breadcrumb Scabs, A Little Poetry, Cahoots Magazine and physiognomy in letters as well as the poetry blog sites Bolts of Silk, Thirteen Myna Birds and A Handful of Stones. She is also included in two Spiraling poetry collections published through lulu.com. Regina never capitalizes but is a good speller. Poetry is the blossom on her stem.

Street art by cern.

Photo by Adam Lawrence.

Walkabout is taken from the forthcoming release (October 20th) from Atlanta's Atlas Sound, Logos. Noah Lennox is a member of Animal Collective and is also known as Panda Bear.



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