Five Wonderful Poems by Rustin Larson

 

Thanksgivinged

 

I rolled my focus forward

as Finnegan played with his mouse on the floor

 

I questioned the navy

I had plans for a submarine

 

I ordered a cold lunch meat sandwich with butter

Finnegan approached his play tunnel cautiously

 

He jumped onto the couch and lay on my lap and purred

and watched my pen carefully as it marked the page

 

He sniffed and pawed the pen

He sniffed my elbow

 

He was an agent of the muse

He sniffed my feet and walked to the kitchen

 

to lick himself and crunch kibble from his bowl

the alarm on my cell phone sounded

 

If my head were the Earth

something would be going on in Madagascar

 

there is a mild sinus infection in Sri Lanka

Caroline's striped paintings sat in a box and watched the sky

 

I was Thanksgivinged

I was gob smacked and potato massacred

 

I had dreams last night of elevators and rivers

I talked to the mother of an old college friend

 

the friend had died ten years ago

I told the mother she should be proud to have brought

 

her daughter to the world

because she only made people feel good about themselves

 

she was the truest of saints

the mother cried as I spoke to her

 

this was in their home

a lovely place of cool illuminations

 

where, oddly, my friend's voice laughed

from her room upstairs

 

 

Argentine Gauchos

 

play flute solos on the backs of horses

a concerto in the parking lot

 

of a bar called linen and lace

sailor beware

 

meanwhile the treasure hunt continues in Iceland

and my tuxedo cat sphinxes before me

 

as the Irish Chamber Orchestra

squeezes orange juice into a fluted glass

 

my coffee is pale

I am not hurrying

 

I no longer have to be in first grade

or smell her chalk

 

how quiet we'd be as we pasted our snowmen

on the sheet of Manila paper

 

but it was irritating when she the teacher chimed in

about how quiet we were

 

I don't know

I have carried my body with me a long time now

 

the shadows rise

I greet people on the nature trail like a true misanthrope

 

in my black plague mask

show me the mass graves

 

I cackle and they scamper away into the falling leaves

a renegade deer ate all my green tomatoes

 

I rarely cry now

only when I listen to Jesus Christ Superstar by Tim Rice

 

and Andrew Lloyd Weber

the rightful king of Scotland

 

my treasure chest harbours small scale replicas

of the original line-up of Pink Floyd

 

today will be a simple day

I will drink my pale coffee

 

and unearth the bones of a mastodon

in my maple shaded sandbox

 

my hair smelling of barber's pomade

and Chesterfield Kings and gasoline and barbecue 

 

 

Enlightenment

 

As I sat in lotus meditating

my cat Finnegan

jumped on the bed

booped my nose with his

and gave me a head butt

while purring away

 

It was a great way

to start the morning

I don't know where I am

 

I was hypnotized

I could hear the hypnotist's words

but my life disappeared

and who knows how many banks I robbed

for the Symbionese Revolution?

 

And now the sports

 

The Kentucky Wildcats

scored a ten point victory

against the Duke Blue Devils

before a crowd

of the undead

 

Now back to lunch hour preparations

 

Vegan Thai dumplings in stir fried veggies

with tofu

 

I am a sunflower 

 

 

Rabbit's Foot

 

In my pocket I would pet its bones

its fur dyed blue for luck

 

poor dead animal a piece of you

while Mrs. Green read us the legend of Sleepy Hollow

 

I could dream catatonic another life

without electricity and thunderous casks of ale

 

in the mountain clouds

Penelope wanted my head removed

 

so she could read the blackboard

it rained for lunch

 

and so we would hold our bowls out the windows

to catch the rain and then sip it with plastic spoons

 

none of the characters in the books made sense without words

although the wood cuts of Rip Van Winkle made me dream

 

other places eyes wide open

sitting in reading circle

 

waiting for the milk truck to arrive to collect the empty bottles

a rhythm a schedule you could count on

 

mail delivered precisely as the German boy swerved his bicycle

in front of the delivery van

 

and was sworn at by the driver

Indian head pennies a rarity but not unheard of

 

and Mercury dimes who we thought were the profiles of the face

on the Statue of Liberty

 

stuffed in the black rubber coin purse

chained to the blue rabbit's foot

 

waking up in another time 

 

 

The String of Holidays

 

Constant Comment and sugar and how many cookies

are we going to bake this year and smear with red and green

 

and yellow and blue icing

and what carols will we sing

 

and will it be too cold to sing

it's never too cold to sing

 

the window light late afternoon

October Halloween makes me feel like a cricket

 

at the bottom of a glass of water

I taste the wintergreen in my mouth

 

Should I eat another one in winter

I ask and she says Imagine breathing the frozen air

 

through your teeth

it will be the year of drunken teenagers

 

breaking bottles of club soda on our frozen doorsteps

on New Year's Eve as I eat boiled shrimp

 

in my Linus Van Pelt pyjamas

it will be the year I place silver cordial beads

 

on the eyes of the butter cookie

snowman who holds an icing broom

 

in his icing mittens while the television

preaches the evening news

 

to the ignorant villages

and my sister cries I wish I could live in Czarist Russia

 

and skate in the moonlight

on a frozen river

 

 

 

Rustin Larson’s poetry has appeared in The New Yorker, The Iowa Review, and North American Review. He won 1st Editor’s Prize from Rhino and was a prize winner in The National Poet Hunt and The Chester H. Jones Foundation contests. A graduate of the Vermont College MFA in Writing, Larson was an Iowa Poet at The Des Moines National Poetry Festival, and a featured poet at the Poetry at Round Top Festival. 

He is a poetry professor at Maharishi University, a writing instructor at Kirkwood Community College, and has also been a writing instructor at Indian Hills Community College. 

Among his published books are Library Rain, Conestoga Zen Press, 2019 which was named a February 2019 Exemplar by Grace Cavalieri and reviewed in The Washington Independent Review of Books; Howling Enigma, Conestoga Zen Press, 2018; Pavement, Blue Light Press, 2017; The Philosopher Savant, Glass Lyre Press, 2015; Bum Cantos, Winter Jazz, & The Collected Discography of Morning, Blue Light Press, 2013; The Wine-Dark House, Blue Light Press, 2009; and Crazy Star, Loess Hills Books, 2005. 

His honours and awards also include Pushcart Prize Nominee (seven times, 1988-2010); featured writer, DMACC Celebration of the Literary Arts, 2007, 2008; and finalist, New England Review Narrative Poetry Competition, 1985.