John or Not
john, don’t scare myself
from the start; another bus comes by,
another day is loosened
by the hours, another decent
filet mignon gets eaten, another poem,
another airplane ride to the caribbean,
another plume out of the oven network of verbs,
another unused thing of anything,
thing of everything, another armada,
another nation drinking espresso, another mother
wrapping her son’s presents,
another future of his,
pressing his face to the future
he drives on in life for another face not his,
he thinks another life is coming for him,
before another death comes into the picture,
another depiction of his life
he keeps repeating, another life
he wants to be fullest—
John Harper is a graduate of the Writer’s Workshop at Iowa, and has published his poetry in literary journals like DIAGRAM, Mid-American Poetry Review, CutBank, Spinning Jenny and Zoland Poetry. He was a book finalist with Four Way Books, and has a chapbook called Peek-a-Boo Terrain.
Euphony Journal 