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    Victims of a Failed Civics
    Victims of a Failed Civics
    Victims of a Failed Civics
    Ebook104 pages53 minutes

    Victims of a Failed Civics

    By Ken Poyner

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    About this ebook

    Speculative poetry describing surreal interactions between the individual and his or her society. A man who is a novelty because he is always on fire. A boy who can summon snakes. A man who feels a connection to the wolf at his door. A daughter who is turning into a mule. An alcoholic town that refuses to give in to advancing temperance leaguers. Individual poems originally appeared in places like “The Iowa Review”, “The Indiana Review”, “Poet Lore” and dozens of other magazines.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherKen Poyner
    Release dateFeb 16, 2019
    ISBN9780463297490
    Victims of a Failed Civics
    Author

    Ken Poyner

    Ken Poyner has published more than 200 stories and 1200 poems in more than 200 journals and magazines, both print and web based. His books include "Cordwood" (poetry), 1985; "Sciences, Social" (poetry), 1995; "Constant Animals" (fictions), 2013; "The Book of Robot"; (poetry), 2016; "Victims of a Failed Civics"; (poetry), 2016; "Avenging Cartography"; (fictions), 2017; "The Revenge of the House Hurlers" (fictions), 2018; and more, with his latest being speculative poetry in "Lessons From Lingering Houses", 2022. He has taught creative writing on a Poets in the Schools Virginia teaching fellowship; and given readings, or taught seminars, at Bucknel University, George Washington University, the Bethesda Writers Center, and elsewhere. He has been nominated for multiple Pushcart prizes, multiple Rhysling and Dwarf Stars awards, the Sidewise award, and several Best of the Net awards. His work appears in a number of contemporary anthologies. He is known for his surreal and Irreal topics and methods.

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      Book preview

      Victims of a Failed Civics - Ken Poyner

      I

      THE BURNING OF THE BARN

      The barn at last is finished burning.

      People who have come to do

      The damned little they could do

      Are counting fingers, thinking

      Of washing the smoke from clothes,

      The smell of damp straw afire

      From their hair. Men look over

      The backs of their sleeves to make sure

      In the effort they haven’t ripped a shirt.

      Children are out in the field rounding up

      The last of the animals. The youngest woman present,

      A bride not more than six months,

      Is the last to walk out of the house with water.

      No one takes the glass she carries.

      A man with boots older and more useless

      Than those worn by anyone else

      Walks into the ash, sees for himself

      That fire, given the barn an hour ago,

      Will not want the backyard as well,

      Will not think of needing the house.

      Still in his nightshirt and yesterday’s pants,

      The man whose barn has come down

      Brings out the only two bottles of bourbon he owns,

      The flask of rum he has borrowed from the nearest neighbor.

      His wife inside is cooking, the stove

      Pushed to as hot as it will go: coffee

      For the women, biscuits for the men.

      Rain for tomorrow.

      THE NEIGHBOR OF THE SEMI-RETIRED PSYCHOANALYST

      He doesn’t think it is a good idea to pry

      Into people’s dreams. All the popular literature

      And late night movies might give it high marks,

      But trying to turn a person inside out, and for pay

      At that, still seems, to him, a bit left-handed.

      Not that he’ll make any less of a good neighbor.

      Both he and his wife will go over just after

      The last of the hired movers drives off,

      Bring their own pot of coffee and enough rolls

      For conversation, dinner, and to fry tomorrow morning.

      He will talk about the soil as though

      The man who bought the land intended

      To grow anything by design on it. Phone numbers

      Will be exchanged, the names of children,

      Gossip about the strip of road near the county

      Package store, and skeletal information about what families

      Can be counted on to do what the community

      Has for years assumed to be their sum purpose.

      He will tell his wife that he really doesn’t mind

      As long as the man practices in the city,

      And no one for miles has the spare change to put into it.

      But still, for weeks, his dreams will have a shell about them;

      And even with them being straight lined and without

      Language, he will worry somehow they will leak out,

      The neighbor will get hold of a corner and pull

      Until the last fifty years unravel. He might try

      To put himself into a mind for black, thoughtless sleep -

      But his dreams will come back yellow and naked

      And maybe twice in a week he will wake his wife

      To put to good use the energy left from them.

      She will be thinking why couldn’t the neighbor

      Have moved in thirty years earlier, and why

      Can’t he move away now.

      LEG-HOLD TRAP

      He howled near two hours before anyone found him.

      Serves him right. The land for miles

      At waterside is half under-burrowed,

      And a pelt will bring a dollar seventy-five.

      Besides, put in collards or lettuce

      And they’ll gnaw the seedlings flat to ground.

      Half-drunk he was, until the leg-hold snapped shut,

      And then he came up sober pretty damn quick.

      A bit of sense and he could have freed himself,

      But as it is he’s only a little hoarse, the bone

      Has a clean break, and the cast will keep him

      Away from the McClellan girl long enough

      For somebody else to move in. The story

      Will keep small children careful for weeks, and away

      From the marsh for days. Two weeks,

      Two dozen signatures on the plaster, even to

      The man on crutches it will be a hell of a fine joke.

      I sit by the dock, watching muskrats race the water,

      Muskrats that would have my yard full of holes

      Were it not for the depth of my new-car expensive bulk-heading -

      Their geometrically pure wakes, their sense

      Of going somewhere on purpose, their twistless

      Twists around weed and dives that are falling without noise -

      Ease in the doing, a home in the act, more grace

      Than in my best dreams of the best women I can dream.

      I’d shoot them from the bank

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