Poetry by Michael Frissore

Five poems
by Michael Frissore




Untitleist

Thou art so tall and thin
as to be like beanstalks
or glasnost

Thou art some
equestrian bird
with boots and feathers
feeding worms to
little Biafran children
and leaping across
Snake River Canyon

Takest off thy britches
and heave them into traffic
like a discus thrower.

Discard thy blouse and bra
like Hulk Hogan
at Madison Square Garden.

And run.

Run like the wind.
Run like Jimmy Durante’s nose.
Run like a prank call victim’s refrigerator.
Run like a presidential campaign

to South Carolina

and tell them that
I have an illegitimate black child
and a drug addicted wife.

Then place me in your
Vietnamese Spin Fuck Chair,
where we will watch
cartoons and religious programming
‘til the cows come home.

And then
we will eat those cows.

--------------------

The Man on the Stage

A one-armed bandit,

spastic like a monkeychicken
eating hashish candies
for menstrual cramps,
he stands naked,
catapulting scorpions
at the undead equipped
with unicorn horns.

His mind goes numb
lip-synching Beatles songs
and eating Miracle Whip.

The microphone is a .357 Magnum
and you are R. Bud Dwyer.

It’s not like the wedding
in Quorn, where, fresh after
shouting bloody hell
at Paddington Bear,
you were the Zodiac Killer.

Weeks later you play
Ricky Morton in lieu
of Woody Allen
on your mother’s birthday.

A suicide bomber.

A comedic kamikaze.

A miscarriage in a barbershop quartet shirt.

And you cry all the way home.

You had nothing to lose
using crib notes
like Richard Lewis
or that kid in high school
who used to spit Skoal
into drawers in biology class.

Your voice cracks
like singing Crazy Train
in a high school gymnasium,
an awkward teenager
in love with an event planner.

And you say,
Just be the writin’ motherfucker.

But write.

-----------------

Not Unlike the Poem I Wanted to Write

Her eyes are not unlike Plinko chips,
nor are they not un-as Velamints
or pieces of Chewels gum.

Her mouth is not unlike
a Hungry Hungry Hippo
or that of a sock puppet
or a Canadian on South Park.

Her tits are not unlike
cantaloupes whose grinds
have been thrown at a
homeless person.

She is not unlike
the person I once knew,
but, then again,
I knew her not as she is now,
nor as she once was.

Yet here she stands
in front of me,
not unlike Joan of Arc
if she were alive today,
when all I want is
to buy a Mello Yello
and an Oh Henry!

--------------------

Eponine
For my wife Amy


Eponine is the goddess of
Cutiebrook Farm,
the light of my life,
the mother of
my two kittens.

She rocks.

More than if Hendrix,
Keith Moon,
Kurt Cobain and
Eddie Rabbit
were in a band together.

She's hot.

She sizzles like bacon,
but is better for you
and tastes better on a
biscuit with egg
and cheese.

Or even
without egg
and cheese.

She's cuter than a bag
of puppies or
homemade shoes.

Her beauty is powerful,
like a cross between
Barry Bonds and General Tso.

And she is sweeter than sugar.

I like my Eponine like I like
my coffee:
in a plastic cup.

--------------------

The Wrestlers

I literally wrestle with myself,
an action figure in each hand
while making phone calls.

Being on hold is a series of
dropkicks, piledrivers and DDTs,
wondering if I’m making
too much of a ruckus.

I have three wrestlers,
two white and one black.
Usually the white ones
beat up each other, or
one of them beats on
the black one,

which looks racist, but the
black one doesn’t have
good punching arms.


Author bio:

Michael Frissore’s fiction is forthcoming in Monkeybicycle. His poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Black-Listed Magazine, Neo Lampshadian Outpost, and Right Hand Pointing. He is a staff writer at The WRIToracle and a contributor at Undress Me Robot. Mike’s story about MySpace, "The Most Dangerous Site on the Internet: Are Your Children at Risk?" appears in the current issue of The WRIToracle at www.thewrit.org.