How to Surprise Your Family with an Amazing Cake
Go out and buy an amazing cake
that surprises everyone.
The frosting is that good.
I want to forget about the broken things
in this house. Forget how the sidewalks
in this town end in the middle.
There’s enough indignity
and confusion in this world.
We have to make it ourselves?
I used to go to frat parties.
I’d drive an hour from my community college
to where my friends went to universities
with real Greek houses. Those frat guys
gave us beer and seemed happy.
I imagine their wives are disappointed
in the same way I am now,
thirty years later.
All these responsibilities.
We used to thirst,
didn’t we? And lust.
Words are crude and not beautiful.
But I cannot paint or draw or speak well.
Math people say zero is a number
and not a number. Let’s say it’s an egg.
What are you making for me in there?
What am I waiting for? I want to go back
and split the atom myself.
Love Story for People Hungry for Revolution
We’ve all been shit on
by birds, unable to wake
from nightmares, cornered
by thieves in an alley,
called on to perform surgery
high on drugs or hung over,
high on drugs in a corn field,
stranded on an alien planet
by cowards at mission control,
turned into slugs by witches
bored with cooking
children in their stoves.
So let’s make a vow.
Let’s promise
to defend each other
with claws or teeth
or hairspray and a lit match.
Let’s storm the government
radio station
to find it automated
and pre-recorded.
Let’s bring down the systems
begging to be brought down.
Let’s hold hands while we do it.
After we declare
the death of the state
bird you can sleep a while.
I’ll keep watch and begin
drafting the manifesto.
I know you like it
when I make a plan
for breakfast.
***
Jeffrey Hermann‘s poetry and prose has appeared in Hobart, Variant, UCity Reivew, trampset, JMWW, The Shore, and other publications. Though less publicized, he finds his work as a father and husband to be rewarding beyond measure.
***
image: M. Roanoke is a queer folk artist based in Kansas City, Missouri. Their photography has appeared in Rejection Letters, and nowhere else. They are on Twitter @Roanokeoke.
Rejection Letters 