READ
Summer 2002
Writing a Poem While Working at the Porn Store
by Mike Hotter
I wish to write a poem of gothic proportions
an ode that will shake sparks in the corridors of your Jungian past.
A vision from back in the continuum,
when we heard the wolves in the stark post-night
and ran from their running, shining flanks, only
to guide them into our crafty trap.
we take
a hidden alcove corner
while they are closed in the valley's deep,
and we light our torches,
raise our spears, banging them off the shields, as
the monsters flail below,
whimper and vanquished
as the burning kite of a comet sheds
skittering globes of heaven over our heads
and sail into the bloodmist
and I try to conjure this memory through a page
but these grubby, imagine-less, hackneyed dweebs
can't keep their hands off the porn
And I wish they remembered those fabled days
when we fucked more out of furious survival
than of spurious idle.