Three Poems by Alan Britt – Zen, Swallowing a Wine Soaked Flea, and Salary Cap

 

ZEN

One minute mullets slap my face,
slash my grin, & fill the boat,
next I’m chasing split fingers
in the dirt.

One minute folks beg photos
for basement mausoleums,
next I’m coughing steroids
in a pine-paneled dehumidified
definition of the Old Testament’s
Heaven & Hell.

One minute thunder plunders
the virgin lips of imagination,
next I’m waltzing the long
end off a short pier.

One minute I’m a saffron wasp
digesting the succulent underbelly
of a green leaf caterpillar hidden
beneath a July broccoli frond.

Unfortunately, he’s the one.

 

SWALLOWING A WINE SOAKED FLEA

It tastes a little like pepper
if pepper didn’t taste like anything.

 

SALARY CAP

Stadiums shiver; knees knock;
knees not what they were
before that right field sprinkler—
then hips complain, & shakedown
of the skeletal system ensues,
& nobody wins.

So much for Cleveland quakes,
Baltimore tremors, Pittsburgh’s
yellow mud, Chicago elections
that don’t involve liquor. So much
for buying the World Series, Yankees
style, ubiquitous, nonetheless.

 

BIO: 

In August 2015 Alan Britt was invited by the Ecuadorian House of Culture Benjamín Carrión in Quito, Ecuador as part of the first cultural exchange of poets between Ecuador and the United States. In 2013 he served as judge for the TheBitter Oleander Press Library of Poetry Book Award. His interview at The Library of Congress for The Poet and the Poem aired on Pacifica Radio, January 2013. He has published 15 books of poetry, his latest being Violin Smoke (Translated into Hungarian by Paul Sohar and published in Romania: 2015). He teaches English/Creative Writing at Towson University.

Library of Congress interview at this link.