WOMEN MADE LESS COMPLICATED
Crash showed up at James Tavern with a
burlap sack the size of a
kitchen chair and stood the mystery
tabletop for an unveiling
Made everybody wait until
all eight buddies had arrived including
Jazzie and her new guy
After drinks, potato skins, and cheese sticks were delivered,
Crash stood up,
tapped his teaspoon to the mug and announced
he bought himself a woman
and he couldn't wait for everyone to meet her
Crash slid the burlap
down smooth beige shoulders, two
chopped-off arms, and displayed his
medical-made Venus DeMilo:
Budget Sweet Sue Torso
a hundred bucks from the Anatomical Products Catalogue out of
Skokie Illinois.
Meet Sweet Sue--Crash pulled her
removable breast cover off
and revealed 14 dissectible parts including
4-part lung,
heart, trachea and esophagus, diaphragm,
stomach, liver, pancreas and spleen,
intestines, bladder and uterus.
He pulled the heart out, laid it
on the table,said
This is the closest I'll ever come
to understanding women.
Jennifer Bosveld
first appeared in
Jazz Kills the Paperboy
Pudding House Publications, full length book on virtual journalism
poetry, 2006
Crash showed up at James Tavern with a
burlap sack the size of a
kitchen chair and stood the mystery
tabletop for an unveiling
Made everybody wait until
all eight buddies had arrived including
Jazzie and her new guy
After drinks, potato skins, and cheese sticks were delivered,
Crash stood up,
tapped his teaspoon to the mug and announced
he bought himself a woman
and he couldn't wait for everyone to meet her
Crash slid the burlap
down smooth beige shoulders, two
chopped-off arms, and displayed his
medical-made Venus DeMilo:
Budget Sweet Sue Torso
a hundred bucks from the Anatomical Products Catalogue out of
Skokie Illinois.
Meet Sweet Sue--Crash pulled her
removable breast cover off
and revealed 14 dissectible parts including
4-part lung,
heart, trachea and esophagus, diaphragm,
stomach, liver, pancreas and spleen,
intestines, bladder and uterus.
He pulled the heart out, laid it
on the table,said
This is the closest I'll ever come
to understanding women.
Jennifer Bosveld
first appeared in
Jazz Kills the Paperboy
Pudding House Publications, full length book on virtual journalism
poetry, 2006
ABANDONED PIANO
Each night while he slept the piano
crept across the floor, another inch toward
the window called by the snapping Blue Nile neon
from the restaurant below his apartment of neglect.
The music left his soul years ago and gradually as he
never ate at home, as he refused to fall
in love, as children were only an annoyance, as
the stars were too far above for him to notice.
A gumshoe keeps his nose to the ground and
the only sound is customer conversation at the
bar and one more convenient woman leaving
forever through the door.
The paino--called to the symphony of the street--
needed to be fondled, longed for a Tom Waits
moment, leapt through the window and crashed
in a marriage of glass, concrete, and ivories in
beautiful dissonant chaos with the city--
low E playing there, one note every few seconds--
a dirge, an Irish repetition, a time to speak for itself.
No one dare clean up this mess.
The story of the suicidal piano was fenced
Smithsonian style there on Perry Street,
wrought iron around the broken heart of a Steinway
not exactly in the middle of nowhere.
It's a site for seeing now, a stop on the tour,
this pile of pain, E at the pace of exhaling, for years
snowed on in the winter and an occasional passerby
stealing a pedal or key in the memory of their own
unrequited loves. Every so often a rusted string
pings like Christmas into the frozen air and plays its
final harmony, E resounds by the door of the Blue Nile--
customers in line disappointed to finally go inside.
Jennifer Bosveld
first appeard in Gargoyle
Each night while he slept the piano
crept across the floor, another inch toward
the window called by the snapping Blue Nile neon
from the restaurant below his apartment of neglect.
The music left his soul years ago and gradually as he
never ate at home, as he refused to fall
in love, as children were only an annoyance, as
the stars were too far above for him to notice.
A gumshoe keeps his nose to the ground and
the only sound is customer conversation at the
bar and one more convenient woman leaving
forever through the door.
The paino--called to the symphony of the street--
needed to be fondled, longed for a Tom Waits
moment, leapt through the window and crashed
in a marriage of glass, concrete, and ivories in
beautiful dissonant chaos with the city--
low E playing there, one note every few seconds--
a dirge, an Irish repetition, a time to speak for itself.
No one dare clean up this mess.
The story of the suicidal piano was fenced
Smithsonian style there on Perry Street,
wrought iron around the broken heart of a Steinway
not exactly in the middle of nowhere.
It's a site for seeing now, a stop on the tour,
this pile of pain, E at the pace of exhaling, for years
snowed on in the winter and an occasional passerby
stealing a pedal or key in the memory of their own
unrequited loves. Every so often a rusted string
pings like Christmas into the frozen air and plays its
final harmony, E resounds by the door of the Blue Nile--
customers in line disappointed to finally go inside.
Jennifer Bosveld
first appeard in Gargoyle
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| Jennifer Bosveld Two Poems |