Rodney Koeneke


Structure The Myth

how gods & nymphs always

come with rapes

spread like benedictions

to the faithful

in orange sarongs

on the soft sand


History Of Zero

love and casino war poker

did you mean qawalli Fibonacci?

All parties compete on equal terms

in even rows

Yemeni chicks dig that

Sequins are snowflakes that stay on my nose

who digs the oil is western

Bones heal, chicks scar

ARCHAEOLO-chicks are digging

Bosnian skull pyramids

built this system

on rock ‘n’ roll

Nor stupid pictures

Xenakis in asspants

chant religieux soufiste qui doit

utility of numerals

to staunch Kristofferson


Memo To Henson

“We can grow a cow in purple—

on your ass.” We can shop and change color and rest

and shop again. We exist in space

or minds of teens with vermillion toenails

stroking our grover

out in the open,

just stroking him out there like that.

We can be swink

and shop Shopzilla.

do serious purple

in the turntable lab:

Dancehall Stars of 1986.

We can look to the book of Ezra

for solutions to the Bandar:

sickly people, sticky purple.

Muppet love sans drugs (we can turn them back).

We can entertain ambiguous images

of extras lounged in studio canteens,

we can devastate Cliff’s hands

at the office pool: “Moo

-chas grassy-ass, See-nor

ass-hat!” Look man, NO MORE HANDS!

We can be the essential funk

recordings of the ‘70s, circle the best

in purple. We can be the ‘80s, the dancy synthy ‘80s

that’s happening over again already.

Consider it

inside your dank glamour,

the simple charisma involved

in our dream:

Grover. Grover in asspants.

Sparkly asspant purple.


2 Poems From "Rogue State"

#14

Seaplanes crashing through windowpanes,
Moon passing river in paper cup.
The camels get restless—God whistles
Through the night like lewd boys
At the prison wrestling squad.

The Magi know their Atari—
Long drives from the bar to vacation bible school
Sear in the hotter mercies of the East
That leave one a-melt at landingstrips, a sherbet
Too orange for summer afternoons
Waiting to be licked up into tongues.

#15

Here at the garden’s hot marges
Events soften into fire ants.
We cock ideas at prairie dogs
To watch them smoke, then squeal

Pythagoreans cross their ‘t’s
With dim narcissus fresh-picked from the clefs
Of that vast, inaudible cosmic symphony
The cow thieves once called home.

Zeus lets fly with the lightning rods
His hot heart flaming like shish-kebabs
Off a Deer Park backyard grill. Marshmellows
Crisp to swart mothers, I burn—pterodactyl
Dactyls sing over me with ease.

* Both poems previously published in Shampoo/Issue-11