Kit Robinson
Two Poems
The 4th of July

What then I’ve held
and gone back to bed for
twists

In history
in reading
in lighting up

The I like a
vertical cigarette or
upside down exclamation

Marks my words with an
oof!
where are my flipflops?

Spinning in the
window of
opportunity over

And over the
shoulder a
helicopter zips

Off and a sprinkler
comes on, music!
to my backrest

The surfeit
balm to my
drowsy wounds

Sirens and barking
dogs and firecrackers
celebrate the breaks

That crack open our
brittle book and
go all the way down

To the spine
independent suspension
rattles our bones

Somewhere below this
collosal head about
when we think

to go off



All Hallow’s Eve

Sworn statement under penulty
of perjury bounce Cubana
white crush and

Took the changes of
How High the Moon
and wrote Donna Lee

A knock out
tattered by a placebo
said the bartender

Under pendulum of venery
irreducible in perpetuity
that’s deep, it’s deep

A declaration
of fellowship
a set of waves

Or surfaces dovetail in
a carnival period climaxing on
Shrove Tuesday

A galvanic couple
provides a public spectacle
heterodox cranny continental

Other guests come as
Lawrence of Chicago
blood

The Tin Woodsman
a gypsy
various composite witches

We walk home at midnight
in our same old neighborhood
for the first time ever

return to SHAMPOO 24