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March 1, 2021

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en temps de peste

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Two Poems

  • May 30, 2020
  • 12:22 pm
  • Mississippi
Turtle birdsong a new way I take walks,/ what’s noted now that we’re a town without/ toilet paper
Riccio Feature

Jon Riccio

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The Trail is Half a Mile or Downtown Amity Island

 

Turtle birdsong a new way I take walks,

what’s noted now that we’re a town without

toilet paper. Four years lived Mississippian,

only this morning did I smell magnolia.

 

The nostalgia for an anthill, the covenant 

between mail truck and magazine. How

do I not miss my classroom when the smell

is ink? Spring break kicked off with Jaws

 

and a sneezing cat on my lap the duration

it took a great white to nosh Robert Shaw.

Early Richard Dreyfuss roles were sixties

television: That Girl, Bewitched. No allowing

 

his hair to curl in oceanographer mode or alien-

encounter predicate. How many aqueduct poems

we’ll have now that people limit their outside

time to interstate-flavored air. Hear the semis,

 

imagine vitals riding: Charmin, Hefty,

celery. My spare moments won’t be

bowling alleys. Will I hear the sound

of moving men again? March 14th —

 

the submarine sandwich worker called

me Mr. Jon, extra chicken, double lettuce.

A removed condiment bottle, precaution

against social squeezing. On that walk

 

I wanted to groove my cuticle through

the turtle’s shell, but I calculated what it

would cost in soap. The tortoise borough

for which it was bound. Lockdown used

 

to mean how the elderly kept their cameos

fastened. Mayor of reptiles, what flashes

on your kiosk: salute to hundred year-

old claws or confirmed cases? 

 


 

Non-Penetration and COVID-19

 

The peppermint-flavored tea dissolves,

anti-malingerer means one who does not

 

die or horoscopes that try a month without

alliteration. I was a corset-maker a few lives

 

back, whalebone in lieu of thumbscrew because

the thimble fit better on a Sagittarius. Optimal

 

distancing, what online matchmakers call

a good-market day. I resort to one-line singles

 

ad: Wants lover for non-penny ′ship. The fact

I have agoraphobia & OCD at a time where

 

intercourse v. indoorsing is not lost on me—

behaviors I’ve locked down cartwheeling

 

out of lockdown but I’m stoic as a potpie

or steakhouse of worship—takes a special

 

knife to know the difference between angus

& agnus, all that A-1 spread on stained glass.

 

The intellectual act is to romanticize the hunker,

think, this afternoon I read Tender Buttons,

 

tomorrow Jesus’ Son while everyone falls

in love with War and Peace & search-engine

 

steps for sanitizer. If I see a roach, my reaction’s

fuck it, the food’s canned. Groom or grovel,

 

it’s in the tuna-logo mermaid’s hands as to

my homebody hotness; mentalcourse,

 

the direction we’ve been moving

toward all along.

 

Jon Riccio
Jon Riccio is a queer poet and recent graduate from the University of Southern Mississippi's Center for Writers. He serves as a contributing interviewer for the University of Arizona Poetry Center's 1508 blog. His first collection, Agoreography, is forthcoming from 3: A Taos Press. He asks that you donate to the Mississippi Food Network.

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