Poems
by Jeffrey Zable



by Robin Wyatt Dunn, with Stable Diffusion                                                                                                      



               THE UNEXPECTED ENCOUNTER

 

   Getting in line behind a guy who looked like an acquaintance

who died around five years ago, I said to him, "Your name

wouldn’t be Tom by any chance, would it?"

   To which he responded, "Lots of guys are either named Tom,

Rick, or Barry. They are very common names. Of the three

I definitely prefer Tom."

   "What have you been doing since I saw you last?" I queried,

and he answered, "Giving out bibles door to door. God gave me

another chance out of the goodness of his heart."

   Telling him I was glad he was still around, I also told him

to tell God I wasn’t happy with the world he’d created. That these

were probably the worst of times, and that he should be ashamed

for allowing such cruelty and suffering to go on.

   Looking at me with a less than friendly expression, he replied,

"You’ll have to tell him that yourself!"

    He then turned and walked away, giving up his place in line . . .








by Robin Wyatt Dunn, with Craiyon                                                                                                          

             TELL THEM

Set a course but of course don’t go

Declare your humanness by kissing an owl on the lips

Ask a drunken teapot the way to the bathroom

Pray to the holy spirit whose only hole is a hole in the head

Laugh with your ears taking in the sounds of a bullhorn in Bavaria

Become an ecstatic dancer wearing jewelry made of jiggers
and when you fall to the ground roll over into a field
of freshly mowed excrement

Say nothing about where you’ve been unless you’re promised a room
that’s wider than an eyelash and higher than the pimples on your toes

Tell them you’ll start over by changing into a fetus in the rain. . .







by Robin Wyatt Dunn, with Craiyon                             



Jeffrey Zable is a teacher and conga drummer in the San Francisco Bay Area. His writing has appeared in hundreds of literary magazines and anthologies. In 2017 he was nominated for Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize. He appeared previously in Chrome Bairns 27, 47 and 72.