John Zedolik writes

The Reins

                                                                

Two pigs, one unleashed,

have purpose in the park—

acorns under the civic oaks

that bear their bounty every fall—

so snouts to the grass and straight

to the trunk, reined slightly back or not,

nimble even carrying their weight

upon hooves peeping between the blades,

the tender, upright and obedient,

follows to the source, a glutton

for the gathering of two intent

upon the yet-giving earth

whose final skin peels off

under their snuffle and twitch,

yielding to those whose appetite

and will masses with much greater press. 

John Zedolik writes

Ars Vbique Est                                                 

Our generously arced spigot

in the half-bath reflects

the faux-gilt and frilled

mirror of this home’s previous

owner into a semblance

of Munch’s screaming man,

but I am at relative ease so

acknowledge the pain the lips

on the chrome, pursed into an “O,”

express, wash my hands, pump

the dispenser of liquid lavender soap

so lose sight of the little

agonized simulacrum of the brush,

turn off the light, rest assured

the tortured face and matching eyes

will be waiting with their angst

and dread whenever I need a shot,

a taut perspective, of immortal gloom.

[Ars vbique est = Art is everywhere] 

 

 The Scream -- Edvard Munch

John Zedolik writes

Doubtful Armor                                                     

The tale, over tea and coffee

on an easy Saturday evening

was of loosed armadillos,

minor mayhem and mischief

on a hotel floor then false

reporting to earnest police,

which yarn elicited laughter

from the group whose members

were reveling in their third decade,

some parenting and some almost,

so what better than a story

of those southern scramblers

of neutral to unattractive temper

on account of their small brains,

according to the raconteur,

in contrast to these relatively

young and prosperous representatives

of a species with much larger

noggins and proportionate brains encased

to boot though without the plating

the old Spanish attributed

to the low mammal, so needing

at times such diversions concerning

carpet-covering chaos little critters

and other unthinkers bring.

John Zedolik writes

Relative Convenience 



We have not been reduced
to harvesting spent lemon disks


and fatty skins of cooked
and consumed trout, 


so let us be happy in our level
of consumption and not worry 


about the occasional lack
of perfect choice in our sustenance.


Any fish or fruit will do
in this particular pinch 


any rind or remains signals crisis
—for now let’s just call our life a cinch.

John Zedolik writes

Private Service 



Anyone could be back here
on the dubious trail beside
the tracks and under the blind 


grip of clasping branches
that yield a private cathedral
of considerable length to any


worshipping in these bottom
lands in their own schismatic
way, river and rail gods girding 


the trace, but, one hopes, not
answering shady prayers for plunder,
pain to travelers, or blood, a stray-lamb 


sacrifice to private demons sans merci
in this tenebrous track leading
to scarred concrete and links 


barring entrance to the mill’s hulking
bones where hellish fires once
threatened without respite even 


the hardened worker, now dead,
or safer than the one on the mud-ruts
and crab grass during a Sunday morning 


under discarded leaves and shadows,
accompanied by only industry’s ghosts,
benign, unlike some current walkers, 


encased in calloused flesh, waiting with steel.

John Zedolik writes

Retail Limit 



We cannot go any further
than this exchange 


at the checkout, for I fear
that I am now an occasional 


irritant who asks her if she
has been writing, to which 


she has responded, “no,”
with every bag and purchase. 


* 


For my next, I will offer
to desist from my familiar 


question and only encourage
if she agrees to my advice. 


She only has to price my items
and charge the cost after all. 


The choice to create may be silent,
and hers alone to tally in hours unemployed.

John Zedolik writes

Child’s Play 



Once I was as the Italian child
in the Brussels airport who, 


upon seeing stroll by a man
with a very large nose, exclaimed, 


“Che brutto!” 


But now I merely note the variation
in the species as its members pass 


whatever station I happen to occupy
and even appreciate the vagaries, slopes, and gaits—


Chalk it up to God’s art— 


which must have some value and intent,
only waiting for the watcher’s bambino 


to grow into consideration, relent.

John Zedolik writes

Straight Reason 



Two concrete steps then a walk
led not to our grandparents’

front door but only to the plaster
swirled at an immobile side of wall,

a dead end alive to mystery
that would pique interest prior

to the raised porch and ingress
by means of another poured,

framed series rising with reason,
perpendicular to the true door,

so, at times, one must turn left
—or right at another managed way in.

Even following sensible architecture’s
restraint, a direct line may really

be only a crooked strait.

John Zedolik writes

The Line                                                       

He wears all black
like the man in—

wore back
in the boom-shicka-boomin’

days to protest injustice, he said.

But this current bearer
carries a stomach
dripping over his silver buckle

seeking the floor, spilling down and out
toward the door

—so much more to slide
under a T-shirt gobbling all light

and fill a fat field of resistance
with a span so much wider

than the Arkansas man
with the flat-topped box.

Yet is his voice just the same
or wrapped too deeply in the flesh

that can only surround, feel agitation
within and out-coming in

—or with enough of a skin sense
to prickle at least in recognition-heat

of the loss, pain of others
cleft from it by the comfort of thin feet?

*taken from the song title, “Tennessee Flat Top Box,” by Johnny Cash, Columbia Records, 1961. 

And It Burns -- Joshua Morton