Two Poems - Kingsley

 


Chris Kingsley

SOME CHARACTER SKETCHES FOR MY NEXT UNPUBLISHED NOVEL


Jerry smoked

like someone who didn’t 

think he was getting away 

with smoking.


Without clapping her hands in quick succession she

clapped her hands in quick succession at Charles’

sudden demise.


Yes, Olivia responded as

the ducks landed on the 

darkening lake like

 a chess move. 


It depends on how stewed the

tomatoes are was

I-can’t-remember-his name’s response

to a question I’ve since

forgotten.


What does Our Love Is The New Vinyl

even mean? Jason thought later 

on the slow bus ride home, 

wondering if he read 

the tattoo on her left butt

cheek correctly.


Old Man Carmichael drove 

his ‘63 Rambler like 

a harpsichord.



You want a fight? Then you got

a fight, pal, the enraged haikuist 

said, snapping a dry

rice noodle

crisply. 


The fifteen years Cedric dedicated 

to acquiring clown paintings was a big

mistake he understood he

was making while he was 

making it but could not help

himself the way a tiny

car cannot stop giving up

clowns even when, especially

when, it’s giving up 

clowns.


When Trey, a philosophy student, dropped

a tab of acid in a goldfish bowl, either

the fish swam upside down for a week 

or Trey, having taken a tab, too, 

stood on his head for the same amount

of time. He didn’t know which it was, 

he only knew that it couldn’t be

both. That is, until he switched his 

major to poetry.


When the IRT 7th Avenue

Uptown Express came bounding from

its hole like some giant worm in

an old Japanese movie, Gerald,

standing on the platform,

imagined taking a ride 

on Godzilla’s shoulders instead. Or hopping 

on Mothra for a breezy flight to Marble Hill. 

The service probably wouldn’t be 

better, he thought, but Gerald 

liked a monster with 

a name.


Why doesn’t it say The End or

Finis anymore at the end of

novels? Ted thought as

he finished the novel. Or

thought he finished 

the novel. 



FAUXBIA


Uh-oh.


Not to be

authentic but

merely clever is 

becoming 


a real fear.



Chris Kingsley lives in the Hudson Valley of New York.