Kenneth Pobo

HI DEATH

It may come to me like a
telegram, only a few words,
terse, impossible to ignore. Or
it may be seductive, wooing me
(are people wooed anymore?)
and knowing how my flesh
is weak, I’ll give in. Maybe
it will come like a plane’s shadow
over our house. It only takes
a second. My grandfather died
that way, crossing a street. It may
come like that picture of Jesus
knocking on our heart’s door,
half god, half salesman. I can
choose to not be home—or can I?

One day I may welcome it,
however it comes,
body, spirit, used up, ready to leave,
holding a blanket before

letting it go.

Kenneth Pobo (he/him) is the author of thirty-three chapbooks and fifteen full-length collections.  Recent boo ks include Bend of Quiet (Blue Light Press), At The Window, Silence (Fernwood Press) and It Gets Dark So Soon Now (Broken Tribe Press).  His work has appeared in Asheville Poetry Review, North Dakota Quarterly, Amsterdam Quarterly, Nimrod, Mudfish, Hawaii Review, and elsewhere. 

Kenneth Pobo

Raylene Means Well

Her pillow is
ringing bells.
She can't sleep.
Several cathedrals
pound in her ears.
It must mean
something,
a new beginning,
a truth that breaks
out, sets a fire.

Kenneth Pobo is the author of twenty-one chapbooks and nine full-length collections.  Recent books include Bend of Quiet (Blue Light Press), Loplop in a Red City (Circling Rivers), and Uneven Steven (Assure Press). His work has appeared in North Dakota Quarterly, Nimrod, Mudfish, Hawaii Review, and elsewhere.

Kenneth Pobo

Plans to Stay

My husband remembers

to buy milk before the container

at home expires and he makes sure

that my computer doesn’t catch

whatever electronic flu

is going around.  I’m not an easy guy. 

Sometimes I’m a pencil, the lead

breaking just when you want

to write a note to stick on the door

for the propane dude.  This could be

an anniversary poem.  27 years,

a couple of bluebirds, beautiful,

but ready to fly away. 

We promised forever.  That’s not possible,

so we took till death do us part.  Death

always finds our living room.

We watch TV and eat popcorn,

hold hands.  Even then,

it doesn’t take a hint. 

It plans to stay.

Confederate Judy

On Halloween I learned

I’d better not dress

as Judy Garland.  That would

get me beat up.  Why can’t

a boy sing “Over the Rainbow”

on a suburban street?

Instead I wore a gray jacket

and told candy-givers

I was a Confederate soldier.

We lived in Illinois—

no one blinked.

A boy can be military

even if he looks like

a schnook kid in baggy pants—

I wore Judy in my head,

belted out “The Man Who Got Away”

and savored my Butterfingers.

Kenneth Pobo has a new book out from a press in India (www.cyberwit.com) called Wingbuds.  Forthcoming from the Poetry Society of Alabama is his chapbook called Your Place Or Mine.