March 2024
Audell Shelburne
d.a.shelburne@gmail.com
Bio Note: My poems have been published most recently in Verse Virtual, and Sequoia Speaks, and Loud Coffee. I am currently working on a book-length manuscript titled Before, Between, Above, Below, Beyond, and will be reading from an unpublished chapbook at Scissortail in April 2024. I am a professor and assistant dean at Northeastern State University in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, where I teach poetry, Shakespeare, and a few other classes. In my spare time, I like to play with my kids, spend time with my wife, pretend to cook and occasionally dabble in watercolor.

Hold

It’s not like I hold a grudge
like I hold your hand, the one
I hold loosely, the other I hold tight,
but I desire you to hold me harmless
if I hold nothing back and hold you close.

Still, if you hold back, I’ll hold fast,
hold my horses until we see
if our relationship holds water,
and if you hold that against me
or hold that over my head,

I’ll hold the line, hold my ground,
hold steady, and hope to hold on still.

I Had a Dream

The power bill came due and autodraft failed,
something about expired cards or broken links,
then the utility company sent out this post 
on social media, complete with a QR code,
that claimed they had switched processors
so everybody was being assessed late fees.

You know, typical rat-race dreams trying
to spin the wheel without creating a turbine
engine that chews you up in the process.

But then the QR code linked into the Matrix,
Stepford Wives, or some such dystopia, and AI
stole control of my phone, took my money,
every account bled dry, even changed names
on our house title (but left the mortgage
for us to pay), left us no car, no food, nothing.

You know, standard fears of loss and losing,
the stress and anxiety of life piling high,
until the weight buries you in the process.

Only somehow it gets worse, this dream.
Like Bottom and Titania, I tried to impress
my wife and found I had lost my personality.
I had no character whatsoever, bland as 
off-white egg-shell paint in a cheap apartment.
My nature denatured, empty, emptied, void.

You know, it might have been fine, until my wife
kicked me out because, as she says, at least
you were something when you were still crazy.
©2024 Audell Shelburne
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