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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
