Monday, September 30, 2013

Jon Bennett- Three Poems

Perch

It takes 5 minutes to catch the first perch
and it’s the biggest I’ve ever seen.
I catch two more, walk to the lagoon
gut the fish, throw the innards -
sad for the fish, and I hate perch
mushy as mashed potatoes.

Walking back to camp
I think about RW
When me and my girlfriend
were in Europe,” he'd said,
we saw people traveling alone
and I felt so sorry for them.”

I make a fire and cook the fish
eat it with balsamic vinegar
and the last of the warm beer.
The perch is as mushy as I’d remembered
but that’s what there is to eat
and I make do.



She Was a Nervous Wreck

I went in and Dr. Wang did his thing.
There was a new hygienist,
mascaraed eyes peering above the mask.
She couldn't have been more than 20
and Dr. Wang's Mandarin
had a gentler lilt with her.

As I was leaving they led in
a white woman using a walker.
“I need to talk to you,” she said to Dr. Wang.
They went into his office
but I could still hear them.
“Its a culture thing,” she said,
“I'm just more comfortable
with my own kind.”

I live with the Chinese
and one of my favorite things about them is
I can't understand a word
they say.



Chipper

A man went to the doctor and told him,
“my shit smells awful.”
The doctor looked at him.
“It smells worse than it should,” explained the man,
“and also, it's an unhealthy shade of brown.”
The doctor checked his watch,
he was late for a tee off.
“Is there anything else?” he asked.
“In fact,” said the man, “I have recently finished
writing a novel, it's taken a decade,
and everyone I've submitted it to
says it's absolute crap
and so I feel, perhaps,
I've been wasting my time.”
“Time is never wasted,” said the doctor
again checking his watch,
“it is merely lost.”



Bio:  Jon Bennett is a poet and musician living in San Francisco's Chinatown.  He is currently seeking a publisher for his first novel, "The Unfat," a speculative sci-fi story about autism.  You can link up with him at https://www.facebook.com/jon.bennett.967 to see his latest poems.

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