by: Drew Gardner ((Header art by the incredibly talented Dominic Wilcox.))
Absolutely anything can happen in a Drew Gardner poem. His slick juxtapositions, surreal combinations, and skewed references move with a quickness and pulse that defies easy reading –their speed asks you to slow down and “divide each difficulty into many parts” as each wavy line dances by.
FAUX SARAH CONNER YARMULKE
The stars you file in binders are first
thought breast thought to get you to first base
or at least to eating paste, though I use that more
out of extracted personal history and laziness
conserving energy from anything where years intersect
with the flat earth society of wearing my uncertainty on my sleeves.
Tools dozing off are more like days
than the folks that get off using spontaneous this
and inoperative secret that.
For the table of contents party is no longer on my head.
Secretly confused at each other like a fuse of cons and breached pros
broken into escapist promises
now that the real danger is my Jeff Dunham paperwork
signing to a major label never to be still
and winding up just registering for yoga classes in hell.
Kind of waded into the lake of epaulets again.
They name their children after crab cakes
and eat away at fried food information like it was going into style.
All my laters your revolving TSA hat bladder,
a super-coffee drinker you forgot to piss on.
Shit for sky. Maybe in some other way
undifferentiated context with America,
but who knows anyway the issues a molten waveform
by the time they hit your brain.
Maybe some moon shone thru Tylenol PM side effects.
Prosody slung over the lax security in my dreams,
basically another real estate bubble
it was time for sleeper cells to dream about.
I’ve got a strobe light in my gall bladder and a slang
about minerals in your head.
So I keep as far away from myself tonight as possible
as the rosey fingered Tony Orlando and broken butt
barfs up on Barney for no reason.
There are kinds of hats and there are habits contained in topsoil.
The memory of mainstream sweetbreads disappointed by the hearts of dogs.
The bare-ass sky contains my head.
A welcome hostility a mile away and now in the mirror.
How many times do I have to pay to wash my car but not to
walk out on myself for the brain’s boob job.
The age of the world no longer never before or after.
One day it’ll all be falling leaves guarding my pillow.
SHOW ME WHAT YOU’RE ON
Common sense is looking at your jewelry.
The most fairly distributed thing in the world.
Divide each difficulty into many parts.
Each problem that I solved became a rule
which served afterwards to catch you by yourself
reading war for beginners.
Rude like a game but also what I’ve omitted.
It is necessary that at least once in your life
you doubt, as far as possible
a big shout out to a precept
capable of walking around like a conversation.
You’re looking at your watch thinking
the senses deceive from time to time.
Two operations of understanding.
I don’t watch your face.
Every mistake
that could be made.
You can keep them
for the birds and bees.
Drew Gardner is the author of Sugar Pill, Petroleum Hat, and Chomp Away. His forth full-length book of poetry, Defender, is forthcoming from Edge books. He conducts the Poetics Orchestra which combines music and poetry through spontaneous conduction.
