Joseph Victor Milford- Three Poems

63

it rains on my heart for eternity and it is fucking awesome. you are jealous and you should be.
guitar headstock rests neck on window-pain. my knuckles are made of metal and wood. kisses.
umpfucteen bad things. shooting pool. lying to myself. morning is landing like a UFO. crime.
mailbox and lunchbox. Keats and his handkerchiefs. i saw a gaunt coyote run towards the abyss.
only starfruit grew in eden. eve had no vagina. she had salvation between her legs. Adam ran.
oracles throw bones and we break them pulling plows. our women die in childbirth. damn holy.
i tried to strangle autumn. demons came and pissed golden-red blood everywhere. i freckled.
snapping green beans into the copper bowls while squash men waited to become casseroles.
cut the grass. slur. laugh. dogwood heaves under a hailstorm. recovers. mocks you. need oil.
quarry dive on drunken memorial day. tattered tags of tongues. sunscreen salt and copulations.


64

cookies. credit cards. cookies. credit cards. the dark ages. cookies. credit cards. the dark ages.
i have the glacier cellphone ap. i will deploy upon you. my three-year-old just threw up. i’ll call.
parchment is what i was wrapped in and it was also my burial shroud so libraries resurrect me.
your storm in me beginning creating dark seasons to come. damn you Donald Trump Star Trek.
wingspan in my chest cavity. a coma stroke embolism aperture. wingspan in my chest cavity.
blogs guns and gaga. i will never chop down my tree but my roots are in your evangelist mouth.
i am cannibal at flesh carnival. puff pastry roadkill. powdered sugar on my lips. turkey-legs.
the idiot comes in like a tycoon. he finds the penny on heads, and he’s happy. smokes his shit.
then he unleashes his tie. relaxes. he always sleeps with his eyes open. he orders beer for all.
and he can’t pay. and it’s Christmas. he has to walk at least twenty miles. it’s love; understand?


81.

it was after the abduction that the town Moreland began to ostracize him. the doctors’ gossiped.
it was like someone asked for rat poison at the pharmacy and then the whole town knew. Toby.
he didn’t want to go to jail—they have the wrong kinds of bars in their. dumb luck counts too.
nueral clusterings like gravel alleyways in a town before first snowflake falls. all is ceremonial.
in dream of great-grandmother she turned to wipe flour on the apron but it was bloodred blood.
he saw the afterbirth of the universe pour out of the interdimensional cervix and went pinwheel.
they still looking for proof of a giant squid. it’s like the lines that never got written by Rimbaud.
he thought Area 51 was where they kept geriatric huntsmen from accidentally shooting things.
lo and behold. tow & fold your hand. resolve and undermine. mow and sow gold. awe flowed.
hexes abundant. in pollen of the tigerlilies was the hexpollen. walked covered in this homeward.



Joseph Victor Milford is a Professor of English and a Georgia writer who is currently working on his EdD doctoral studies. His first collection of poems, Cracked Altimeter, was published by BlazeVox Press in 2010. He is also the host of The Joe Milford Poetry Show, where he has compiled an archive of over 300 interviews and readings with American and Canadian poets. Joe Milford also edits the poetry journal RASPUTINand he is co-founder and poetry editor of BACKLASH PRESS.