Poetry: Selections from Damon Hubbs

1980s Love Poem

 

i. a line from Pretty in Pink

 

after hours

of post-coital

coiling, soft talk

like a run in a black stocking

 

hang-ups

call-backs

pushing buttons

 

butterfly pose

to forward fold,

ass on my own head

in a Marinelli bend

 

balletic, fingering

the floral pink bedding,

wet breath in my ear

 

jealous

of the second

phone line

 

I just wanna

let them know

that they didn’t

break me

 

ii. a line from Duran Duran

 

talking, whispering

world without end

so much talking boys

 

in a rec room

wood-paneled

like a station wagon

 

the pegasus

on the dartboard cabinet

watching

 

as we stalk

the pages of Tiger Beat

talking, always

 

until we steal

whatever liquor we can

steal

 

& straddle the line

in discord &

rhyme

 

smearing

our new jaguar scent

on each other’s faces

 

iii. a line from Bret Easton Ellis

 

& the way

the acid kicks

in some

where unexpected

 

fates conspire, while we

in love & returning video tapes—

Total Video, on the other side

of the Dietz St. parking lot

 

now a spatial anomaly

of satanic panic & milk carton faces;

didn’t some college girl

get murdered here you say

 

another late

fee

on our

nasty.

Uphill Both Ways

 

she lived up there  

on Peebles Hill, off of East

         my sentimental education,

in a house of late afternoon

cigarettes & picture window sunsets

60s vinyl, her mother’s

folk collection

 

this is back

when you’d ride

a ten-speed

uphill

both ways

for the chance

to unhook a bra

 

years later, after

the hippie phase

she painted her eyes

like smeared synthesizers

& love triangled

with a Spanish exchange student

who wrote poetry

 

she left

not long after

we were married

         my sentimental education,

an irreconcilable

restlessness

singing in her heart.

Cinder Blocks

 

the man

at the claw crane  

never runs out of quarters

 

the rest

of the mall

ran out long ago

 

now it’s just

the claw man &

a few arcade games

 

kiddie rides

broken & gutted

like cars on cinder blocks

 

one quarter, two buttons

up, across

release

 

time & again

the claw man is empty

handed

 

& nobody’s there

to tell him

that unicorns don’t exist

fruiting bodies

 

‘Clean bar is a happy bar’

the prof sd, as if the scuffed oak

bartop mushroomed a bract of fruiting bodies;

we call him the professor

like he’s a Man of Letters

& not just an adjunct

to an adjunct at the SUNY on the hill

who’s tended third shift

at the Sip & dispensed word

backs neat long as we can remember;

‘listen,’ says the prof

thumbing the soda gun,

‘man takes a drink.

drink takes a drink.

drink takes the man.’

& you lk at him & say somethin’ like

‘on an all-inclusive vacation’

& we laugh & thrall

the day breaking asunder

downtown

Damon Hubbs is interested in leisurely games of tennis & perfectly moist coffee cake. His poetry has appeared in Book of Matches, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Otoliths, Scud, Roi Fainéant Press, Horror Sleaze Trash, The Beatnik Cowboy, etc. He lives in New England.