Glengarry Glen Ross
Inside nondescript buildings
Salesmen are fighting like tigers
To survive the killing fields
When somebody dies
Their body gets tossed into a portfolio where after a while
Coffee plants begin growing out of their eye holes
There are nights when bloodthirsty capitalists
Dive into big piles of loose change & coffee grounds
Where they drink too much earthworm espresso
& wriggle around looking for the slightest touch
Maybe the rain will fall and cleanse the palate
But when the sun returns like the wrong kind of lover
Salesmen across America pretend that everything is okay
That the system works, that you can squeeze water from a stone
That the buzzing sensation inside their heads is a migraine from God
And the only cure is to always be closing
Sons & Lovers
Moms across America
Are having the same nightmare:
Trump-eyed morticians
Riding broken bicycles
Through their childhood homes
And crashing into the walls
Awkward family portraits
Falling through the floor
Moms across America
Are waking up screaming
Running outside into the street
And building astronomical observatories
Out of their dead sons’ baby teeth
Teeth they’ve been hoarding for years
In drawers next to husbandless lingerie
And road maps from years ago
Moms across America
Are filling up the starless sky
With the broken-armed ghosts
Who’ve left them behind
When the sun starts shining
Moms across America
Are drinking bad coffee
And thinking of the days
When planes didn’t crash
Into American bandstands
The Death of Harvey Weinstein
At long last, the Man in the Moon is dead
Now the moonlight promotes female empowerment
There are flat-chested women singing in the streets
Elsewhere, misfit detectives are wandering in the Rust Belt wilderness
Trying to solve the mystery of America’s missing men
They’re digging for clues in the computerized dirt
Our great-great-grandfathers are rolling in their graves
Their bones turn into baby sea turtles rising from the earth
They start crawling towards the ocean to sink their chauvinisms
Heterosexual boyfriends of America, cut off your arms
And bury your smartphones stop holding the universe together
With animal glue and carbon emissions the time has come
For you to lay down your swords the time has come
For you to kiss the feet of fag hags and beg for forgiveness
There’s still music in the air you can still change
Bionote
Justin Karcher is a poet and playwright born and raised in Buffalo, New York. He is the author of Tailgating at the Gates of Hell (Ghost City Press, 2015), the chapbook When Severed Ears Sing You Songs (CWP Collective Press, 2017), and the micro-chapbook Just Because You've Been Hospitalized for Depression Doesn't Mean You're Kanye West (Ghost City Press, 2017). He is the editor of Ghost City Review and co-editor of the anthology My Next Heart: New Buffalo Poetry (BlazeVOX [books], 2017). He tweets @Justin_Karcher
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