Dylan Loring
PASTURAL
I lean back in the La-Z-Boy, recline,
rock, sit-up, sleep, repeat, and pace toward
the mailbox a little too early
for the tin-can-on-wheels to make it around.
I find the winter wind chill refreshing,
an Andes mint after a big old bowl of spaghetti.
I giggle unknowingly as the frostbite accrues.
The leaf piles smooth-over to my children’s dismay
as Mikey’s son aims BBs from the top of a propane tank,
birds suspending song in favor of squawk and flight,
nervous droppings divebombing their assailant.
And the cat’s vine of hairball barely surfaces
after twenty minutes of buildup before
the tentative re-eating begins, and O
the respect I have for this animal’s intellect,
how it buries its excrement like a human soldier.
And so the mice silently writhe in my house’s walls,
nobody, animal or otherwise, bold enough
to nick the peach pie from the windowsill,
the smell of which wafts toward the heavens where
a hungry angel, at last, ceases its hurry over Des Moines.
CONFESSIONAL POEM NUMBER 62
This bathtub needs
a plugged-in microwave
so I can vacillate between
making popcorn and sizzling
into discount fireworks.
At least the book I picked is good;
Collected Ted Berrigan makes me feel
like I have friends that are here with me
and not hundreds of miles dispersed
I can feel my strength building
just holding this book that I wish
was waterproof,
though I’m more than willing
to settle for the built-in page marker flaps.
Many days I settle for mediocrity:
loose onion chunks on the kitchen floor,
treating my lungs like a Brita filter
as cat hair infiltrates my nostrils.
I still cut my face shaving like I did
back when I was seventeen,
before I actually needed to shave.
I wish I was better at not yearning aimlessly,
but I’m a human idiot,
always will be—
and so will I be always will.
Dylan Loring is a poet from Des Moines, Iowa. His poems have been published by New Ohio Review, North American Review, The Laurel Review, Split Lip Magazine, and Forklift, Ohio.