"I know noble accents
And lucid, inescapable rhythms"
----Wallace Stevens
"Thirteen Ways of Looking at Blackbird"
Don Kimball
Don Kimball is the author of the forthcoming chapbook, Skipping Stones (Pudding House Publications 2007). His poetry has appeared in the Edge City Review, The Formalist, Iambs & Trochees, The Lyric, The Blue Unicorn, and various other journals and anthologies. In 2007, one of his poems was nominated for the Pushcart Prize and three other poems won two first prizes and a second prize in national contests sponsored by the Poetry Society of New Hampshire.
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Don Kimball
Jilted
How hard I hurt, through April, May and June
to thrash this out in verse, work out the stress,
buffooned by the mean light of an old moon,
awake, alone, at home where I’d obsess,
replaying what Bo did and why – that snake
who left me by the altar, love all moot;
lonely for friends to bring me carrot cake,
to make me laugh and help me cuss that beaut!
Then, I put on my face, this mask; like Garbo
I needed solitude, to cut and play
the blues; to moan a ballad like those hobo
poets, Whitman, Villon – and end the day,
not high or drunk, nor one who twangs a rhinestone
guitar; I bawled, then flushed his cheap cologne.
www.lucidrhythms.com
© 2007 David Landrum