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Poems

It Is Enough

By Mikey Swanberg From Issue No. 6

                                    to be out here

loving the dog and possum equal

squinting down at the spermy tadpoles

curious as hell how they become spring peepers

there is so much still left to spread

on all these different types of bread

who cares if it makes us fat      look at Fiona in the zoo

up 71      we were worried she wasn’t getting fat quick enough

and now we get to see pictures from her birthday party

we are not clinging to scraps

joy pays dividends

joy puts out an earnings call

you can plug some clock parts into a potato

and somehow THAT works

so no      each day is no more or less important than clothes

sometimes you take them off slow

and others you cant hardly stop to breathe

pulling pants over boots      laughing into the bed

we have to make peace with the fact

that we are the only animal

that can be driven from the herd

for saying something mean      we get to care about each other

we get to put our faces in each-others armpits sometimes

and honestly that is sort of the best thing

we can go to the store and buy all the different types of pickles

for a taste test      and never agree on which we like best

I know you knew this      that one doesn’t have to squint

through suffering to see beauty      the first cartoon

was a mouse piloting a steamboat      all of Hopper’s women

were so lonely because he liked to paint lonely things

just like I like to go see the baseball game

and fill up on hot dogs and beer

you find out if a battery still has juice

by dropping it to see if it bounces

but we used to only know to put our tongue

to the plus sides nipple and squirm

to see if we’d get a little shock

sometimes you run your hand over a plant

and nothing happens

and sometimes all the leaves drop off

when i was growing tomatoes      I called my mom to say

mom      do i need to cut all these little flowers off of this tomato plant

and she wasn’t sad I was dumb      no one tells you the fruit is the flower

until someone tells you the fruit is the flower

and even then      like me

you might still look it up

down in coney island my girlfriend pulled me away

from the loud and hilarious arcades

to show me that you could drop a quarter in a slot

and make a whole mock coney island

come springing back to life

and right next to it another quarter

would make a woman and two cats dance

but one cat      was broken

and won’t I remember that forever

and doesn’t that make the broken cat so much better

sometimes I sit all day at the computer

and all I have to show for it      is this

a couple of lines that say I like walk

where we’re headed      if that’s an option

and boy I really like

to be kissed

About Mikey Swanberg More From Issue No. 6