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Three Poems

By Benjamin Goldberg


Misery Tour

At first there’s little more 
than a crumbling toy store 
frequented by weeds.
The windows on Main Street
are mainly paper or plywood, 
the faces smiling in them 
painted on.  The Indian family 
serving Tandoor chicken 
hustles old stereos next door, 
tax-free, at back-room prices.

In the remaining shard 
of your side-view mirror, 
an arthritic woman smiles 
as she waters the hedges 
of a senior-community 
whose last residents have long gone.
Only one FM station still plays,
and you’re praying 
your beater doesn’t break down 
as you stop at the broken stoplight.

Promises to Wake to

I heard you whisper
that you’d be first and only

to stand over the mattress,
pinch the IV drip, and leave 

soaking in the bedpan
a bouquet of poison ivy.

Gingerbread House

Between Moose Bottom Road and Naked Creek  
it's perfect leave-your-baby-in-the-car weather.  
Tucked in the folds of Old Rag Mountain, its dumpsters
lend to the ambience of burnt sugar and swamp.

Flies buzz near a bucket of mop water 
the smell of a bathroom you could die pissing in.  
Someone's grandma in zebra-print booty shorts winks 
at a Mormon whose vintage titty mag peaks from his bag.  

In the open kitchen, a plate drops into a skillet
of scowls.  Even the misplaced hipster found her
place here sketching on the placemat portraits of a waitress
who calls her diners “honey” or "ladybug."

Cool air caresses your face from an open mini-fridge 
as fingernails polished the color of pan grease
tear plastic wrapping off a Black Forest cake:
nobody stays hungry long enough.   



Benjamin Goldberg lives with his wife outside Washington, D.C.  His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Raleigh Review, MAYDAY Magazine, Terrain.org, and The Southeast Review in which he was a finalist for the 2012 Gearhart Poetry Prize.   He teaches high school English.

Copyright 2013, © Benjamin Goldberg. This work is protected under the U.S. copyright laws. It may not be reproduced, reprinted, reused, or altered without the expressed written permission of the author.