local_library Admiral Cornplaster

by Jack Harvey

Published in Issue No. 251 ~ April, 2018

I reading

Buck Rogers

in my bedroom;

 

Like a flash of old times

I remember

Admiral Cornplaster’s

name and numen,

his misadventures,

fleshed in windowpanes

in the comic-strip;

climbing the walls of rooms,

hanging like a bat

from ceilings,

his green profile

against naval

summer whites

and gold frogs

lovely and lovable,

but formidable

like a big baby whale.

Did he love Buck or

only leave him loving?

Krypton will never know,

never cross his path.

 

And roly-poly earnest

his face fakes my

childhood back

alone reading upstairs;

World War Two

rumbling on out there,

Europe pounded down

and the green Pacific

atolls flashing back

to bare coral.

 

But soaring on tasteless wings,

I roared like the devil-dogs of Mars,

out out out

into deep space

and I had a crush on

you, cute Admiral,

and I wanted you for my friend.

 

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Jack D. Harvey’s poetry has appeared in Scrivener, The Comstock Review, Bay Area Poets’ Coalition, The University of Texas Review, The Piedmont Poetry Journal and a number of other on-line and in print poetry magazines over the years. The author has been a Pushcart nominee and over the years has been published in a few anthologies. The author has been writing poetry since he was sixteen and lives in a small town near Albany, N.Y. He was born and worked in upstate New York. He is retired from doing whatever he was doing before he retired.