Category: Andy Axel

Three Poems

Andy Axel for BOMB Magazine

New poems by Andy Axel for BOMB Magazine:

Canada Dry
 
How specific is neck to a woods?
Sleep-sick, the vehicle I operate’s full
of ears that fail to be pricked by the query
so I field it myself, “one for the road” in that
it keeps it under us because it keeps me awake
to the dark of what’s technically morning,
pierced by First Birdsong Award-winning
bird’s song. We’re trucking scrapple,
a regional meat for meat’s sake
and since back North you can’t get it,
quick since the further you take it
the less edible it gets.
 
No one’s a local at the tollbooth
because nobody’s from where we are,
but the robot’s there always,
taking a job and I’m asking
what can’t be trash
to a bin that says “Trash Only.”
Mirror I saw on the sidewalk,
I know this one,
“not trash, not free, $50 bucks”
it said in magic marker,
throwing up a plot of clouds slick
with the surface but empty of threat.
How much a 2-liter drained of ginger ale is worth
depends on which jurisdiction you redeem it in.
 
Listen—a border welcomes us to brittle glass,
meaningful chiefly in the units we use
to get away from it.
Wherever we’re going is home,
where I’m at my worst for loving distance.
Like a landmark, I steer by the loose-leaf
a Bambi Academy kid crayoned a big rose
and “no smoking” onto I found
stuck to an inner tube in winter
as it rolled free down Mermaid Ave,
navigating by values I can’t know.

(…)

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