obituary for a calendar
by Marc Darnell
it had its
latticed lifespan on
the wall
though it held an extra
two months
miniaturized
on the ass of
December
as a plea of
survival to 2019
the neon highlighter
slashed it date
by date yet it
kept its diptych panache
march an airbrushed
waterfall
april a poisonous frog
may a gash of petunias
we had tacked it
on an unclean wall
crucifying it
then standing
around as it
bled its staled
31’s away
and we wanted its
gridded judgmental
face over with
that held 4 seasons
of our parenthetical
(dirty secrets)
our gouged-out
ambitions ###
and asterisked
failures ***
—
Here are some poems from the glamorous flood plain of Eastern Nebraska, where 84th Street in Omaha has 3 potholes per resident. Nebraska has a new poet laureate, but he won’t return Marc’s phone calls. Marc Darnell graduated from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop when it was still called that, and when he had more muscle and confidence and less fat and prescription drugs. He hopes you find his carefully-honed, chiseled rantings engaging. My mom’s garden flooded and the propane tank tipped and leaked into it, but she still planted tomatoes there. Want some?