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published November 2009

Gregory Sherl presented these poems to his poetry workshop. Consensus: they lacked 'any sort of concrete images'. He apologizes for that. Gregory's poetry has recently appeared or is forthcoming in New York Quarterly, Gargoyle, Bryant Literary Review, Roanoke Review, Night Train, PANK, and elsewhere. He can be reached at jesuis.gregory@gmail.com.

1:57 PM (Smoke Break)

by

After I eat sushi I don’t want to eat sushi any­more. I am bruised on the inside. I have torn every mus­cle that ever existed. I am a clump of Play-Doh. I am an all-beef patty cov­ered in spe­cial sauce. I am drown­ing in spe­cial sauce. I have drowned in spe­cial sauce. I am stuck inside your Easy Bake Oven. I’ll build you so many tire swings it’s silly. Today I ate an apple and then dropped the core into a trash­can I have never dropped any­thing into before. I want to make love to the skin between your toes. I undress in the mid­dle of a foun­tain. My clothes soak in all the water. I have never eaten whale but I chew on pen caps. My chest hair is the bris­tles on your tooth­brush. I clean you nightly. We exfo­li­ate while lis­ten­ing to Canadian alt-rock. We sleep on a bed of deflated balloons.