Live Nude Poems

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. 

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.

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 w...