38 POEMS UNDER 100 WORDS
by
Bill Yarrow
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
1.Excommunicado
2.Bone Density
3.Nan Sequiter
4.Not That Kind of Pain
5.Chapel Access
6.A Journey of Seven Thousand Miles
7.The Lost Boys
8.Prowl Car
9.Self Alaska
10.Pain
11.Son of Uncle Sam
12.Cranshaw on a Boat
13.The Rest Nowhere
14.Bees in the Eaves
15.Pink
16.The Death of Sherwood Anderson
17.Precipice of Questions
18.The Tapeworm of Selfish Mammon Eats All the Goodwill in the World
19.Julia
20.A Piece of Him
21.Ratatouille
22.Before the Door
23.Parabola Tango
24.Sermon of Lilac
25.In My Hometown
26.Black Squirrel Poem
27.Not Enough Sin to Go Around
28.Anthropometamorphism
29.Villon, Stop Following Me Around
30.Abraham
31.Bare Ruined Palace
32.Holy Week
33.Peterson Park
34.Mad Love
35.The Separation
36.Kicking Out the Enjambs
37.Not a Villanelle
38.He Holds an Expired Visa and a Monday Grudge
EXCOMMUNICADO
1.
they tied him to a louver
and piled up hickory sticks
the flames gushed through the slats
and then burned down the house
not every punishment proceeds
without a hitch
2.
in walks the ghost with wireless hands
the hacksaw complexion
the jackoff heart
Gabriel in a zebra suit
3.
like a dog's first whiff of cinnamon
integrity is confident
it can annihilate perfidy
4.
here's what can be glimpsed:
a rose degraded to a thorn
a man etherized on a couch
all the hymns of Hymen sung to the music of crucifixes
5.
the moon is our conscience
we shall not wane
99 words. This poem appears in Blasphemer (Lit Fest Press 2015).
BONE DENSITY
The Fauves are visiting. Come to redesign
the patio, they have upstaged the heart.
They have brought with them their own music
and solemn gondoliers. Madame Fauve,
with a twisted braid, is dancing. So is
the decadence in the wall. I applaud
the thoroughness of the measurers, but
cannot sanction their pervasiveness.
The Fauves must leave. Stat. I have an
appointment with deadness at 3 PM.
They say they understand, but I sense they don't.
I have offended the sorcery of art. Ah, Art!
Ah, Liquidity! On the bulkhead of the horizon,
clouds collect, indifferently, like restaurant fish.
98 words. This poem appears in Pointed Sentences (BlazeVOX 2012).
NAN SEQUITER
Nan couldn't follow. She was a leader
by default. She'd organize the orphans, the
waitresses, the paralegals, the instructional
designers. Anywhere she saw a mob, she'd
leap in and take control. Inherently coherent,
there was no mess she couldn't manage,
no chaos she couldn't tame. I met her
in Manhattan and I became her greatest
challenge, for I was recalcitrant to order,
reason, logic and sense. She looked at me
and saw someone ruined by lunacy, wrecked
by recipe, consumed by juvenile nostalgia
for a manufactured past. Well, that was
twenty years ago. Now I only make sense.
98 words. A version of this poem appears in Pointed Sentences (BlazeVOX 2012).
NOT THAT KIND OF PAIN
What kind of pain is it? Stabbing?
Shooting? Throbbing? Tell me. Is it
a radiating pain? Does it burn? Point
to it. Is it a pain or more of an ache?
Does it feel muscular? Is it constant
or occasional? How severe is it? Is it
infrequent or recurring? When did it
start? What do you think you did?
Lift something? Move funny? Is it
relieved by exercise? Better lying down,
sitting, or standing? Does applied heat
make it better? What about ice? You
think maybe it could be stress related?
No, different. A different kind of pain.
98 words. This poem appears in Pointed Sentences (BlazeVOX 2012).
CHAPEL ACCESS
Every tunnel's a piercing, every road's a tattoo.
The billboards are wrinkles, road signs are scars.
Cranshaw said he saw eternity last night
wearing a sarong and smoking a cigar.
“You're full of it, Cranshaw,” I said
and stared at the fraudulent broken line
that stuttered in front of me. Madeleine
in the back seat touched me on the neck.
"Why so ornery?" she asked. "Why?
2008. 2009. 2010. That's why," I snarled.
What was eating me? Continental drift. Urban
sprawl. Cranshaw! His smarmy teeth and
mildew jitterbug. His checked suspenders
and dragonfly belt. 2011. Maybe everything.
97 words. This poems appears in Incompertent Translations and Inept Haiku (Cervena Barva Press 2013).
A JOURNEY OF SEVEN THOUSAND MILES
I had studied the prohibitions carefully.
We had been warned not to eat any raw
fruit, but when I saw the bowl of apples
that morning at breakfast, something
ruinous came over me. Greedily, I grabbed
an apple and cut it into fourths. The taste
of what is denied us is sweet, and so are
the careless acts that spell our doom. Love
must have seemed so as it steamed out of
the primitive soul. In the land of amorous
gods who balance on bubbles of swift bliss
it is the elephant who most knows about restraint.
97 words. This poem appears in Pointed Sentences (BlazeVOX 2012).
THE LOST BOYS
They live in Colorado and Washington state,
Alabama and the Carolinas. They squeak
by on sad inheritances and pristine discards.
Every day hurts, just a little, but not enough,
so dreams billow in and smother ideas.
Meanwhile, the body does its daily dance
alone. It's a neutral life, frighteningly fun.
One fills one's lungs with schadenfreude.
Two finds the missile hidden in the boot.
Tomorrow will be incandescent, but
if it isn't, who will remember to regret?
Day bleeds into day and eventually clots
into a life. Remember what Eminem
taught: let your longing be your GPS.
97 words. This poem appears in Pointed Sentences (BlazeVOX 2012).
/>
PROWL CAR
They picked up Delmore for reverberation.
I'm heading over to 23rd and Oregon
to post the petty codicil for bail.
Desiderius was busted for sawing off
his ankle bracelet. I thought he knew
better. I warned him. He wouldn't listen.
They're rounding up the hyphenates.
I texted Vargas-Llosa and Cabrera-Infante.
Did you get a hold of Valle-Inclan?
Chris? Found drunk in the street
again. Talking smack to a Czech
girl who said she knew him. Well...
The moon's out over Miami. Mischief
has marked the bone marauders for doom.
Under every sparse tongue is a skeleton key.
97 words. A version of this poem appears in Pointed Sentences (BlazeVOX 2012).
SELF ALASKA
"A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us."
—Franz Kafka
Was there, he wondered, some parasite,
some infiltrated germ, some totalitarian
pest, asbestos fiber, cancerous
particle, irradiated isotope, sliver
of glass, peach pit, foam nugget,
stray hair, impinged corpuscle,
magnesium wad, metaphysical
quill or arrant stalk moored in him,
or what? Why was it so difficult to move
toward anything? Was his will congealed?
His doctor recommends an Arctic cruise.
He travels to a frozen stream, a frozen
lake, a frozen sea. He photographs the
awesome ice. A glacier calves inside him.
96 words. The poem appears in Pointed Sentences (BlazeVOX 2012).
PAIN
I hold it in my hands as I might a tomato,
roll it across my palms, look for pale
imperfections, toss it in the air.
Its mute newness amuses me.
Without warning, it gathers to a greatness
and rescinds the amnesty of breathing.
It rockets across the corpse we are not yet,
indicting the criminal skin. I become
a pachinko parlor, the ozone layer,
a desert fire. Everything I understand
is in danger. Even the mathematics
of eternity is in jeopardy. What's left
of salvation is covered in gelatin.
There's a buttered emptiness awaiting us.
95 words. This poem appears in Pointed Sentences (BlazeVOX 2012).
SON OF UNCLE SAM
He doesn't drink, but he has his
intoxications: strength, sugar, sleep,
sex, surprise. He's hooked on the pinball
excitements of adolescence. He's the one with
a moustache loitering on the monkey bars. He's the
one who just replaced the lifters on his Impala. He's the
one whose girlfriend needs a wholesale career overhaul. He
can see the future, but it's not a future that will come true. He
works with his hands, but that takes brains he tells his nephews.
He's over forty and he still eats red meat. He's got sand in his socks.
95 words. This poem appears in Pointed Sentences (BlazeVOX 2012).
CRANSHAW ON A BOAT
We are floating on the Chain of Lakes
eating Rice Crispies out of a bucket.
The sun is a soft lozenge medicating
a bright red sky. Water skiers hold
onto their slackening ropes like love
itself. On Party Island, the icy drunks
have seized control. Cranshaw has
his hand inside Margaret. No one
is shocked; he was born brazen.
But when he starts in on the Jews,
Arnie gets mad and pushes him
over the side. We let him tread water,
then swing around to pick him up. Justice?
Remorse? No, Margaret wants him back.
94 words. A version of this poem appears in Incompetent Translations and Inept Haiku (Cervena Barva Press 2013) and The Vig of Love (Glass Lyre Press 2016).
THE REST NOWHERE
A screaming comes across the brain
interrupted by a webbed memory:
a man in brown with a rolling gait,
stubbornly strong, a dull ghost
(until spoken to), dusty and disgusting,
squinting towards wisdom. He holds his
candles upside down and ambulates toward
the great chains of his being. Stethoscope,
please! (Silence.) No pulse on the body's
horizon. I know too much about delusion
ever to be deceived. Love's funny that way.
When all else fails, look to the consolations
of misanthropy. Up ahead, there's a signpost;
down below, the rich ricochet of loss.
93 words. A version of this poem appears in Pointed Sentences (BlazeVOX 2012).
BEES IN THE EAVES
We write in darkness. We love
in alleys. We breathe into beige
paper bags. Anything to mollify
the confusion. Anything to simplify
the math. I am beset, even by rest.
And when I close my eyes, the world
is still macaronic. I feel for the wolf
about to be trapped in the landfill.
I feel for the crab about to scamper
from the net. I feel for humanity when
the brightness of sick knowledge falls