Ben Leach- Two Poems

Cohorts

We have stoned softened red glow type eyes.
We have switch gaze type eyes.
Our eyes sit in our faces
like star slits in the nighttime.
We have very clean teeth
because there’s chemicals in our tap water.
We have friends and we have enemies
and all of us have nicknames.
We get drunk and say things we don’t really mean.
We dialogue:
You ain’t about it and you ain’t never been about it, my frent.
We talk like we're going to get Holy Roman
sized funeral processions,
like when they’ll march Jigga
back down to the Marcy Houses
with all the weeping ladies in big black hats.
We take turns hating each other
to keep our minds right.
We’ve made a habit out
of having conversations with nihilists
because everything seems much clearer when
you’re not afraid of dying.

(Originally published in the DePaul University lit magazine, Threshold, in June 2014)

Portrait of Man

Man on the bus seated next to me
is tatted flex buzz cut type.
I get a good look at his face
and on his left cheek is a tattoo of a rat,
these red eyes, this long tail.
I ask him about it,
says he got it in prison.
I ask if he got it because
he pissed someone off
and he tells me to mind my own,
says he got it because he loves rats.
I asked him why
and he says:
Rats can survive
by eating their own shit.
There’s power in that.

Ben Leach lives in Chicago by way of Columbus, OH. He has self published two chapbooks of poetry and has writing featured on various blogs around the internet.