Three Poems – Mike Jurkovic

Clock of Things

No lichen on my pizza please
but she insists like new york girls do
when they know they’re right
and you’re just a doofus staring, staring
at . . .Well they know you know they know
what you’re staring at and they’re gonna
have their way no matter the day
of the week
or the month
of the minute
in the larger
clock of things
that chimes
the hours of
the avalanche
that overwhelms
even we
who once
outpaced
the curve.

Blood Street

It was raining on the Red Lights on Bloedstraat
when I heard they found your remains
thirty five hundred miles away
in the woods in Massachusetts.

We had only met maybe twice
once during a radio interview for my book
which was new at the time
but not since. You liked my haiku
and I thanked you for that.

Now they’ve found your remains
thirty five hundred miles from back there
and it doesn’t seem right. Perhaps,
like so much, there should have been
more: refuge, shelter. And maybe the rain
on the Red Lights will wash it all away but
I doubt things like forgiveness and mercy
in times like these.

Eleanor’s Purse

Eleanor’s purse held many things.
Everyone’s prone to the shivers and yips
she says, curating her bag
w/a passion few possess.
This here’s for bloating she’d puff,
holding a change of face and coin
one small vial, two orange pills,
three sets of sixty, four counts of felony,
five minor headaches, six Christmas trees,
seven separate somethings.
Eight triple ply, nine bold remarks,
ten turtle doves, eleven assorted mints
twelve novellas, and

You lose at least ninety minutes of life
stuck in traffic each day she’d insist,
no stranger to the truth but not quite kin.

God wields w/o partiality
she’d note, handing you a hammer.

Mike Jurkovic‘s latest collection, mooncussers, was published by Luchador Press in 2022. Recent collections include AmericanMental, (Luchador Press 2019); Blue Fan Whirring (Nirala Press, 2018). He is the president of Calling All Poets, New Paltz, NY. His reviews appear at All About Jazz and Lightwoodpress and he hosts New Jazz Excursions WIOX 91.3 FM. He loves Emily most of all.