Chinese Finger Trap Kevin O'Connor Poetry

local_library Chinese Finger Trap

by Kevin O'Connor

Published in Issue No. 250 ~ March, 2018

They’ll say I’m depressed,

just don’t bury me in Alabama.

Even Ricky Watters…

 

I can’t eat vanilla ice cream

without a side of poached eggs.

The National Anthem sounds like nothing.

 

Beethoven’s symphonies

as stale as a sack of year-old onions.

What is football? What is music?

 

How many times can I get struck

by lightning and still climb to my feet

and say “Hooray, I survived”?

 

How many bolts of lightning are hiding

in the clouds? Five thousand years’ worth?

I’d like to use one on Roy Moore,

 

another on Batman.

I’d like to eat turnips for lunch

glazed in warm chocolate syrup.

 

Now I’m crazy.

Now I’ve never been to Mars.

There is only what comes next,

 

these ideas of order from the East,

O pale Franny, O Javier.

No one’s immune to such preservation.

 

Martin Luther King Jr.

and Doug Jones on a lifeboat,

in the stars.