Rodney Koeneke

Jazz Impressions of Gazprom

Labor scab, you owe me
for the drinks drunk in Hawaii
that we gave the apparatchiks
   to string management from trees

Each new time I punch you
a fissure sends a gas plume
above the Czech Republic
   where the ladies love my ghee

It’s just business—gluing shtetels
to excuses for the awnings
stuck with numbers of suppliers
   for their music on CD

Surfers, hear me check statistics
like a lover come downriver
past the estuary pipeworks
   through night’s orthopedic sleeve

Stick a man inside a tanker
and he’ll treat you like a Hapsburg
being martyred at a border
   to consolidate the see

It’s so lonesome here, Monsignor
but they’ve blocked my work computer
you will find the best chorizo
   under domes the churchly flee

Come and crowd my cramped bodega,
Ms. Provocatrix in pantsuit,
I’ve abandoned economics
   so cassette for you is free

I can orchestrate your folkdance,
little Hussite with a handbag,
cap the oil with this nipple
   and the line stops killing bream

Look Lara, I’m so splattered
with your theme inside the movie
that’s your ring down in my cocktail?
   I’m pure green boy energy

In the dark I do my thinking
if this movie has an ending
if it doesn’t, feel me breathing
   on your fake neuropathy

You’re no good at being vicious,
I looked younger in Peshawar.
She is foreign, with a seester?
   I am coming. Let me be.

     
return to SHAMPOO 38