Donner
Just past Twin Bridges
a snow chain broke
lashing the wheel like a whip
so I got out
and lay in the slush to fix it
It was 4am, no cell service, freezing
and I pulled at the octopus of wire
until my fingers were numb
I knew a man in Reno
with a problem
and a big wallet
and although I got his money
the Sierras wanted revenge
As a last resort
I took off the wheel
but the car shifted in the muck
slipped from the jack
and pinned my arm
After yelling for a while
I thought I heard
a large animal
and it was then I remembered
Donner Summit,
how one minute
you’re looking a man in the eye
and the next
he’s in your stomach.
-Strippers
I was only 14
but I had a friend who knew someone
and we got a job stripping
the covers off paperbacks
When a bookstore can’t sell something
they return it to the distributor,
romances, mysteries, magazines,
the distributor in turn sends the covers
back to the publishers
to prove they weren’t sold
The warehouse we worked at
happened to be gay owned
they had Honcho, Blue Boy, Torso
a real eye opener to me
but they also had
Club, Gallery, Hustler, Chic, Juggs
and it was all destined for the trash pile
I was a morbidly obese preteen
and no one paid attention to me
as I left with boxes
of stripped science fiction and porn,
the substance worthless
without those
precious covers.
-Smackulon Lord of Junk
The doctors had put me under
with fentanyl and midazolam
and I was having a dream
Smackulon, the Lord of Heroin,
was sitting at a bar
and pushed a shot glass toward me
“Don’t be a wuss,” he said
When I drank this magic liquor
a doorway opened
to my colon
and Smackulon and I
walked through, arm in arm
We saw gladiola-like microbes,
fluorescent lichens, cawing crows,
a chocolate river
and a fissure to Hell
where all the cancer
was leaking out
Then Smackulon shoved me
headfirst into that fiery place
and when they woke me
I found
I was still
in a world of shit.
Bio:
Jon Bennett writes and plays music in San Francisco's Tenderloin neighborhood. You can find his work on most music streaming websites. A collection of his poems is available on Amazon at https://www.amazon.com/Leisure-Town-Jon-Bennett/dp/B09NRK1N79/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3LJF1VA7QW8O&keywords=jon+bennett+leisure+town+poetry. You can connect with him on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100067752415341.
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