Rubric
What if Christ said, Screw it
and threw down the cross.
I'm done working with wood.
And refused a drink just because.
What if the sky never opened,
and miracles dried like puddles
in the sand.
If Christ died with His shirt on
and left the soldiers with nothing
to gamble.
Stranded the prophets in mid-sentence.
What would be the best seller
of all time,
where would the organ players
go on Sunday,
and what would you think then
if I said apple?
One Good Cigarette
What day is it,
she asks,
tongue pierced with crucifix.
That's the way
I want to remember her,
hungover with dreams,
one good cigarette
no apologies
just tea, black
like her hair.
Kitchen on the verge
of butter biscuits,
kids at the corner
pelting the schoolbus
with snowballs,
and the hissing radiator
on the long walk upstairs.
Tuesday, I say,
handing her the funnies.
Highway ad Nauseam
You were stunned
to find yourself
on the median,
forehead peeled
to gray bone.
My shirt-plug
kept bleeding.
Hungry boys
eyed your traffic-
tossed dress.
What if
I didn't stop
and they started.
Blind Submission
I am the disappearing man
in the calibration shack
groping for a rubber o-ring
to satisfy my stick boy body.
The disappearing man,
no introduction required.
Don't waste your etiquette
speaking of air.
Disappearing man
in the corner, safe
from the french onion dip.
Wink
I'm gone.
And like the bad drunk brother
(carried from the wedding by cops)
shouting, "I'll be back mutherfukkers,"
I will be back.
©K. A. McGowan
K. A. McGowan was born and raised in Scranton, Pennsylvania, where he learned to operate a shower curtain machine in an expiring factory. After a stint as a paratrooper, he found himself down South at McNeese State University in Lake Charles, Louisiana, and started writing poetry. He teaches in Lafayette, Louisiana, and lives nearby with his wife Jessica and son Mark.
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