Maureen Kingston- Three Poems

The Pilgrim’s [Plotless] Progress [Spectacle]

Le déjeuner sur l’herbe : Freud’s Benefits Supervisor Sleeping :

pshaw! : in America : women rise up : cast off the chaise longue :

workout : get in shape : stand upright : shed the x-axis : learn to

rope-a-dope : to come out swinging : their hips : at the Bada Bing!

an at-will employee

the triumph of somebody else’s will : I work in a pink ghetto :

earn pink monopoly money : just enough to be in the pink :

but on the brink : on Saturday night : looking for something

bigger than myself : by the bar’s pink light : some synchrony

of soul & crotch : something beyond this life in the fold

The Wanted Poster

It’s what we all want–

to be wanted.

That misshapen

malformed

warty-headed

thing–

Want.

Its coup &

contrecoup

pound

its cold bacon skin

dead

without the heat

of frying pan.

***

What price

to that outlaw

Want?

What scar to its

vain face?

An etch

to the cheek

a screech

a neck hooked

by the law’s

peavey pole.

***

There’s a

copper curve

to Want.

Its tongue resin

coats

palate plates

tints truth.

Made it, Ma!

Top of the world!

Want

just can’t help itself–

engraves

its own

death writ

cranks

the printing press–

fame

its final

annihilating

reward.

 

 

 

Short biographical note: Maureen Kingston is an assistant editor at The Centrifugal Eye. Her prose and poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Camel Saloon, Emerge Literary Journal, Foliate Oak, Gone Lawn, Rufous City Review, Stone Highway Review, Terrain.org, The Mind[less] Muse, Visceral Uterus, and Wild Orphan (UK).