GAS Featured Poet: Tohm Bakelas

 

Tohm Bakelas is a social worker in a psychiatric hospital. He was born in New Jersey, resides there, and will die there. His poems have appeared in numerous journals, zines, and online publications. He is the author of 19 chapbooks and several collections of poetry, including No Destination (Kung Fu Treachery Press, 2021) and The Ants Crawl In Circles (Whiskey City Press, 2022). He runs Between Shadows Press. 

 

getting paid for poetry

i use an uncashed check
as a bookmark
in all these
poetry books
i read.

the check states: “1 poem,
Five dollars + zero cents”

how’s that for irony?

i finally got paid for poetry
but never cashed the check—

it’s too late now,
the publisher folded

maybe the $5 was
too much to swing. 

 

black wheezing thing 

 

i stood there 

at the end of my driveway, 

staring at the  

black wheezing thing  

flailing inside the 

fox’s mouth,  

wondering what it could be— 

bird, cat, opossum, pig, child, 

something un- 

holy  

 

i couldn’t tell because  

the thing, the black wheezing  

thing, didn’t have a head 

 

the word soul kept  

flashing through my mind 

and i thought about religion 

and sorrow and life and death 

 

and the fox smiled  

as if it could read my mind 

 

and that’s when the rain started 

and i turned away