Alan Catlin- Three Poems

Due Date

She must be in her

twenties, three kids

already and another

about to drop, working

doubles at Dunkin'

Donuts to keep the food

on the table because her

unemployed, NASCAR

loving honey can't seem

to find a job come love

nor money, wants the

whole enchilada, paycheck,

this week for "something

big" as if she didn't know

what that meant, something

big always meant eating

Spaghetti O's for a month,

there are just so many

Spaghetti O's a person can

eat, not that he'd notice,

he's been off home cooking

for weeks, ever since I

hit five months he's been

banging somebody else,

thinks maybe I don't know

he did the same thing last

time, probably the time before

that for all I know or care,

thinks marriage is the dirtiest

word in the English language,

the way it comes out of his

mouth it probably is, all he

cares about is getting laid and

he don't much care who it is

lying down to take it. On her

break she chain smokes four

Menthol Lights, shivering

the whole time, must be

she really feels the cold more

now that she's almost due.

Heart Like a Wheel

Maybe she was in

training for a new kind

of power lifting event:

hoisting cold ones one-

handed and slugging them

down, half the contents

of a glass two quart pitcher

at a go, only pausing to

belch and to wipe foam

from her lips with a ragged

sleeve of her flannel shirt

that had previously been

used as a drop cloth for lube

jobs by semi-professionals

or maybe she'd honed her

skills at a chop shop, holding

rear ends of cars up on her

own, saying, "Lift? I don't

need no stinkin' lift, I've got

all the lift I need right here

on this broad's shoulders';

maybe that was where she'd

gotten the bucks for her one-

of-a-kind world's in collision

tattoos that rose from beneath

her customized low cut t-shirt,

unfettered tits like the hubs of

mag wheels 'built for speed

and for distance'; maybe no one

would ever forget how she

polished off the second half of

her pitcher, slammed it down on

the bar so hard it split clean in

two right along the seam waking

the bar drunk from his perpetual

coma long enough to witness her

saying," Next pitcher's on the house!"

and it wasn't a question.

The Gathering of Tribes, Schenectady, N.Y. 2013

After the funeral, the assembling of

the grievers, gang banging their way

to the shrine of candles and empty

bottles: tequila and vodka, Jameson’s

Irish and Morgan’s Spiced Rum, not

a native assembly, nor a celebration of

life with music and song, but a procession

of the drugged and the addled, haters

in cargo pants strapped around their knees,

ball caps turned sideways, backwards,

trash talking and roach toking, blocking

the sidewalks, the street, refusing to let

traffic pass, rude and abusive, examples

of a dead city’s life force: gangs with

spray paint guns for territorial piss marking

on empty buildings, and guns to insure

they stay that way: vacant and marked

as their own.  If they could read anything

more complicated than Text, they might find

themselves in an Extraordinary Popular Delusions

and the Madness of Crowds, once the cops

arrive, responding to shots fired reports,

requesting the assembled to disperse,

a request greeted as a call to war, a police

state action, no matter how respectful

and restrained the order was issued.

Four backup units plus Smokies later,

the street mellows to a relatively funereal calm;

only the relatives of the dead inside the manse

planning the next family gathering for Attica

in the Year of Our Lord, 2015.