Showing posts with label Mike James. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mike James. Show all posts

Wednesday, January 13, 2021

GAS Featured Poet: Mike James



 
Mike James makes his home outside Nashville, Tennessee and has published widely. His many poetry collections include: Journeyman’s Suitcase (Luchador), Jumping Drawbridges in Technicolor (Blue Horse), and Crows in the Jukebox (Bottom Dog.) He currently serves as an associate editor of Unbroken.



That Same Vincent of Alehouse Fame

 

If he found wrinkles he called them timelines, 

And read between. Firmly believed in survival 

Of the sleekest. So he put on makeup when 

He kissed up to anyone on stepstool or ladder. 

Despite a fear of his own height he played 

Through, was well played. 

Normally, kisses happened on clean shaven 

Days. That was not quite every day

Because of leap year extras. He was always 

Pocket-mint fresh, perfumed. So, of course, 

He loved daisies. There are over 

Twenty thousand daisy varieties. 

At night he counted them instead of sheep. 

He seldom dreamed of falling, but often of fields. 



Leigh 

 

She had a lot of secrets.

Some in the pockets of the summer dresses she wore year-round.

Some kept out back in an old shed beside oil cans and butt-busted cane chairs.

A couple were lonesome in the sugar jar, after she gave up pie.

Some were in the blonde first curl above her forehead.

One of the secrets was the type of music she kept in her glittery, flapper hat.

She kept that hat in the spare closet at the end of a hall she seldom went down.