2 September 2003 | Vol. 3, No. 3
Tar Pit, Freight Train
I. Tar Pit
Feet sinking in the Wal-Mart parking lot, walls thick and soft
as mattresses crawling up. Windproof, soundproof, dizzy
from the world buzzing around, hummingbirds hovering
to see how much sweetness they can get before the cup
dries up, red liquid spilling to soak into the ground.
A Mastodon watching its horizons slowly sink past eyes
bagged from too many fitful nights, days spent out of work
hiding in bed or roaming the store, buying anything to slow
descent into numbness. There will be no artifacts, no bright
archeologist collecting clippings for finding bones or hair
or bits of befuddled brain; what there is is all there is.
II. Freight Train
More like a bullet train, rocketing across a Japanese landscape,
a trip straight through un-rebuilt Nagasaki. Flash-burned
millions, thoughts from each seat, every direction demanding
a ticket-punch, recognition; none comes, and they really are
out to rob this train, if only we knew who "they" were.
The need for sex and booze and smokes and food and music,
hard and heavy, speed the tracks up to match the velocity, leave
a pretty, mangled corpse instead of a burned-out husk, love
everything and nothing, the voices speaking of both but they're
all the same voice, and the pile-up is inevitable, money and speed
and death rolled up into a package we can light and smoke.
About the author:
Jeff Kersh has an MA from the University of Southern Mississippi, where he was lucky to have studied with Angela Ball and D.C. Berry, and a PhD in Poetics and 20th Century American Literature from Oklahoma State University, where he was fortunate to study with Mark Cox and Gordon Weaver. This gradual development has produced publication in a variety of print and online publications, including Zuzu's Petals Quarterly Online, Reality Times, pith, )ism(, and others. In addition to writing and holding down a "real job," Kersh is a semi-professional musician and minor world music scholar; his first nonfiction book, Basic Hand Drumming, is due out in 2004 from Windstorm Creative. He currently lives and works in the Jackson, MS area.
For further reading:
See the complete list of work by Jeff Kersh at 42opus. Browse the contents of 42opus Vol. 3, No. 3, where "Tar Pit, Freight Train" ran on September 2, 2003. List other work with these same labels: poetry.
