In the spirit of sharing pocket poems, here are a few shorts by Gerald Locklin to which I frequently thumb. First, a poem with poems and pockets:
THE MORE I READ, THE MORE I WRITE
my one reservation in taking on
a graduate seminar in the american
renaissance was that the amount of
re-reading it would require would
interfere with the writing i had
planned for the summer. i soon
discovered what i should have known
from experience: walden alone had me
filling up my pockets with poems.–from The Last Round Up (Wormwood, 1996)
I love Locklin’s willingness to find poetry in the mundane deliberations of class prep. So what about finding poetry (among other secrets) in one’s underpants? Here’s a funny one about an inopportune sniffing of one’s own shorts:
DOING MY DENNIS HOPPER IMITATION
i smiled goodbye to the pretty receptionist
at the ymca pool and went to store
my gym bag in the trunk before
driving home. but as i spread my
towel and bathing suit to dry, a
pair of jockey shorts fell out.
i knew there were two pairs,
an extra clean pair and the one
i’d worn to the pool,
so, instinctively, i raised this one
to my nose to ascertain which
one was which. they were the
fresh ones, but my eyes fell on the
sweet young thing who’d followed me
out with the membership card i’d left
back at the desk.–from The Last Round Up (Wormwood, 1996)
And here are four from an earlier Wormwood chapbook, Children of a Lesser Demagogue (1987):
IT TAKES, IT TAKES A BUSY MAN
he hadn’t made a dent
in his list for weeks.
one of the items was “call z.”
then one day z’s wife called to say
that z had died.he was ashamed to catch himself
indulging in a feeling of accomplishment
as he crossed “call z” off his list.OLD MACDONALD HAD A MADONNA
“you are a misogynist,” she says;
“are there any women, over the age of twelve,
you haven’t written nastily about?”“yes,” i say, “i have never written
anything uncomplimentary about farm women.”that takes the wind out of her sails.
“farm women?” she asks.
“farm women,” i say;
“i have cast no aspersions upon
the integrity of farm women.”she shakes her head in speechlessness.
THE WALDEN/WOODSTOCK APARTMENTS
thoreau was right about the
majority of mankind leading lives
of quiet desperation.the problem with my neighbors
is that they are not even
quiet about it.PRIORITIZING
when my wife reminds me
that i have offered to take my daughter
to the library
at the same time that the lakers
happen to be on against the celtics,i heroically proclaim:
“my children mean more to me
than any dumb basketball game.”of course, it isn’t the playoffs yet.
I had only planned on typing up only a couple of poems for this post, but my revisitation of these chapbooks got the better of me. These poems are as clear in their meaning as any ever written, and the combination of quiet music and unquiet wit make for many a rewarding rereading.