Issue 4: Jim Goar
Party games
Promised a kiss. Something
he could not gather. Followed
that Damn-ward frog. His head
was filled with marbles. Sin-
king. Heavy is the crown. Your
mission should you choose to accept.
Listened to Grail music. All day.
Every day. And then it stopped.
The last one standing. Not a
Perilous Seat remained. Empty.
Discount tires
Grew sick of the radio. Commercials all
day. Every day. Behold a world with-
out end. The same old song. Construction
in the sky and on a stone. A father but not
my father. Hope when baseball would do.
Tired of this continuous loop. Hounds and
hens round the Round Table. Forgot my um-
brella at home. Each inning called for rain.
The saddest song you’ll ever hear
No longer looking for the Grail. Instead a
simple question: Which side are you on? Ra-
vens on a picket fence. One language I know
too well. Wanted dead and alive. A funny
place to be. Way down in a hole. Graffiti
on my broken skiff. Fertile as the sky is not.
These are the ruins you’ll find. Fools’ armor
under all that stone. Alive in itself. Dancing.
The poems above are from a new working of the Arthurian Legend entitled The Dustbowl. Pieces from this series can be found in The Raleigh Quarterly, Poetry Wales, Jacket #37, Dusie, and English. A book, Seoul Bus Poems, is forthcoming from Reality Street Editions in April. Another book, The Louisiana Purchase, is forthcoming from Rose Metal Press in 2011. Jim Goar edits the online journal past simple and is studying for a PhD at UEA. He recently returned from reading at the SoundEye festival.]
Copyright © 2010 by Jim Goar, all rights reserved. This text may be used and shared in accordance with the fair-use provisions of Copyright law. Archiving, redistribution, or republication of this text on other terms, in any medium, requires the notification of the journal and consent of the author.
