NEW SHOELACES EVERY MONTH

The red and white peppermint-colour ones

The stringy lime sherbet-tint ones

Hard-to-tie extra long licorice ones

The overpriced chocolate fudge ones

Elastic ones the colour of kiwis

The 100% cotton ones with knots the size of blueberries

Orange ones that imitate a rope

Ones with the texture of overcooked pasta

Milky white ones made in Guatemala

Tiny lemon-coloured ones that stretch a bit

So when I am down on the rocky ground

Beside the seashore kissing your feet

I’ll have the sensation some god or goddess had

Tumbling headfirst from sky to earth

When the blue ocean crashing against white

Sand floated into view at dawn for the first time

PLATFORM

A soapbox in every city and village
In America

Whoever wants to
Should wash their laundry
In the public square

Hang out their woes to flap in the wind
Ordinary people
Should scream with voices
Louder than soap bubbles

What kind of detergent is freedom
If you have to crawl through green mud
To a pile of black dirt on a mound
Of yellow dollar bills screaming
Some tune like “Turn Down The Volume”

FRAGILE SENSE OF COMMUNITY

Held together by pepper spray

Locked together by Taser zaps

Washed together by fire hoses

Barked together by K-9 forces

Wheeled together by throwaway handcuffs

Glued together by the folks in blue

Followed together by invisible cameras

Fenced together by wire & rope

In the distance a huge hole

Where a tall building once rose

In the further distance a lonely woman

Holding a candelabra in her broken arm

Farther yet one sentence condemning us

To a freedom from whispers & large lies

John McKernan—who grew up in Omaha, Nebraska—is now retired after teaching 41 years at Marshall University. He lives—mostly—in West Virginia, where he edits ABZ Press. His most recent book is a selected poems: Resurrection of the Dust. He has published poems in The Atlantic Monthly, The Paris Review, The New Yorker, Virginia Quarterly Review, The Journal, Antioch Review, Guernica, Field, and many other magazines.

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