November 2022
Bio Note: I didn’t get serious about writing poetry till after bing hired as a Faulkner scholar. So, rather than going back to school in an MFA program, I learned to write poems in what one might call “The Monkey See, Monkey Do School of Poetry." My instructors were the good and great poets of the era. There were advantages as well as disadvantages compared to the traditional track, but so far I’ve managed to publish nine full collections and four chapbooks. The latest collection, Call Me Fool, came out from Red Hen Press in September.
Archaeopteryx
One of evolution’s also-rans, it got
stuck with a moniker that presaged
drug company concoctions (“Life’s
got you down? Try Archaeopteryx. ”).
It had feathers jammed into a lizard
body, it’s “flight” a flapping hop,
claws ill- suited for perching safely above
its predators, if it could have flown there.
Glitz ridden as the Edsel, it was doomed
to disappear. And if the earth survives
our goose step, cash flow, and glacier
liquidation, we may end up asleep
in shale with the archaeopteryx:
discarded lemons, fossilized.
Radiation Day
We sit together in a hallway once a week,
old guys wearing sweat pants for easy
dropping when its time for our ten minutes
under the ray aimed at our prostates.
I wore sweats on my high school track team,
when we warmed up for a meet—far cry
from the high-class duds that adorned
the basketball team, who got cheerleaders, too.
The doctor told us we’d need a full bladder
for the burn to work right. If the drive home’s
too far, some often have to pull off
to unleash in a cup. Mine’s a Big Gulp.
We must make this trip forty-three times,
after which the nurses will ring a bell
and give us a cheer for outpacing death,
striding patiently somewhere behind.
©2022 William Trowbridge
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