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Featured Poet: KARL KOWESKI Print E-mail
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By MELISSA HANSEN, on 05-03-2008 20:44

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Published in : OW! Site Content, Lit Circus




where my shadow should be


I buy my daughter
books I neglect
to read to her.

I buy my son
a baseball mitt
with no intention
of playing catch.

I'm never around,
never where
I need to be,
but always there's a replacement:
seducing enticing
commercials promising
a better life

paid for
by my absence.






Continued...


the difference between
a snow angel and snow demon
 is whether you lie
on your front or back
 


the snow melts
during the span of the night
water dripping from the tin roof
ticking away the seconds
 
waking up to the same
dead yellow yard
lawn furniture scattered
a crooked basketball goal
held in place
by a broken Power Wheels truck
a couple of semi deflated balls
matted with mud and grass
placed like grave markings
 
it’s as though
the snow never fell at all
the momentary beauty
bestowed by the powdery inch
a figment of the family’s
collective imagination
 
if not for the corpse
of the snow man
slouched in the shadow
of the house trailer
 
every hour the children
check the carcass
for further decay
 
charcoal eyes crushed into the ground
head split open, melding
with the yard, hour by hour
shrinking in upon itself
skin crystalizing
torso eviscerated
innards plundered for snowballs
to ambush daddy
until this too is gone
fading to memory
 
the first snow fall of the decade







the bookseller


When I told my wife
I sold my first book
she reacted with far more
joy than the event warranted.

"I didn't even know you
finished your novel."

Actually, I'd yet to
finish the first chapter.
We hadn't quite reached
that watermark in our
marriage where I could
comfortably reveal that
my writing time went
to downloading porn.

"I sold a book on eBay,
Stephen King's On Writing".

"Oh," she deflated.

I sold it for a dollar.
Five bucks altogether,
adding shipping and handling
minus the twenty-five cent
insertion fee and the forty-
four cent PayPal fee,
not to mention the seventeen
dollars I originally paid
for the book
five years ago.

She looked at all the books
lining the shelves
of our bedroom.

"Keep it up," she said.
"At this rate, we'll be
out of the poor house
in no time."
 






Karl Koweski is a 33 year old writer living on top of a mountain in Alabama.  He writes the column "Observations of a Dumb Polack" at www.zygoteinmycoffee.com.  His latest chapbook, Diminishing Returns, is available at www.sunnyoutside.com.

"where my shadow should be" originally appeared in Diminishing Returns and "the bookseller" originally appeared in Nerve Cowboy. Karl Koweski is a member of The Guild of Outsider Writers.

Last update : 05-03-2008 22:46

    
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