three poems by tom will
A Nerudian Sonnet for Floodplains
Waiting with my little insurances And caulkings; I gave up on you; you flood Years emptied my pool; cemented goes It over; no flood But every drop I emptied wasted or Drained; You collected in many a plain And today you made me shiver; in a Rush I realized how forgetful a flood Was; was it one pool or five that I have Been in; how much water did I draw in this life What hour will your flood come; and displace My media coverage; the soaked khakis And the tarzans flyfishing on the levees The newscrews in rubber waders; the janes
Show and tell moon all night
Someone is going to pick me up. Not my parents, not my parent’s friends that live close by or my one time girlfriend with a car at sixteen. But someone is going to pick me up from school. Drive me home from school. I’ll sit in the front seat for the whole forty five minutes, so I’ll leave my walkman with you.
When they pick me up, I’ll play the radio playing Maroon Five. Who all the girls sing to at parties, like a chorus of frogs or raindancing indians. A rain dance making it rain would have been less surprising than seeing a bossa nova song make every girl in a basement sing in unison without spilling a single red drop of soda.
It’s the winter solstice and the moon is already out. It’s on every station. They don’t sing along to any other song that comes on that night. It’s the last schoolday before Christmas break. All of this is in a duffel bag under the stairs in the main building named after a saint.
Pearl Moon
Spraying canned air on our underarms and groins.
Drying like paint as it blows across the moon.
When we made love; it sounded like someone was dragging a string of pearls down the road.
TOM WILL is a poet who lives in Tennessee. He has had poems published in Expat, Rejection letters, and Tragickal, as well as in other publications. He is currently the poetry editor of Apocalypse Confidential. Sonnet Cycle, his first chapbook, is currently out on the Schism Neuronics imprint.
MAXIMUS 