page 1 of 2

for the strange woman on a green bicycle

you seem wayward

off the peninsula
in an appetizing fashion.

you wouldn't fold
would you?

wind

drip

and boneless.

like all the rest.

- justin hyde

(added 10.16.09)

...lately these women

up under my skin

little metal slivers

leaching into the bloodstream

anchored at the brain

like flecks

of lead paint.

- justin hyde

(added 10.16.09)

these boots

chris from upstairs
showed at my door
with a pair of
tan leather
red-wings.

he's got
slight brain damage
and ptsd
from bad foster care placements
as a kid.
he didn't
tell me any of that.
i met his caseworker
in the hall
one afternoon.

heard you're leaving,
he said.
sad to see you go
consider you
my good friend.

told him
i need something bigger
than an efficiency
cause my son's
gonna start
spending the night
couple times a week.
that and the cockroaches:
i don't mind em
but don't want my son
having to deal with that.

yea
if i wasn't on ssdi
i'd find something better myself,
he said
and handed me
the boots.

i seen yours
sitting out front your door
all winter
looking pretty scraggly.
we're about same size
figured you could
use a new pair.

told me
they belonged
to his twin brother:
he died
in a construction accident
down in tempe arizona
five years ago.

they're too tight
in the foot
for me.
tim had narrower feet
and didn't have
shit for brains
like me neither,
he said
and stuck out his hand
and said
if things went sour
at my new place
i was welcome
to his couch.

- justin hyde

(featured in the poetry forum 10.16.09)

the vicissitudes play a queer logic

my three boys
forgive their dad for leaving
but they still ain't forgive me for
working two jobs
to raise em,
suzy drains her cuervo
and puts an arm
around my shoulder,
so nice to see you,
she says for the tenth time
even though we
just met.

she's in her seventies,
we've been matching shots
the last hour.

the vicissitudes
play a
queer logic,
i say
motioning to the bartender
for the next round.

what'd you say?
she asks.

life is funny
sometimes,
i say
holding my shot up
for a toast.

no
that ain't what you said
you tryin to sell me meth
i ain't in for all that,
she takes her arm off my shoulder
stumbles to the other side of the bar
and draws me down
with a
scowling bead.

i ain't gonna
fuck you either,
comes a
pick-axe voice
from my left.

rough little stump
couple decades past me
with a black eye.

don't worry sweet daffodil
i ain't presently
in rut.

what you some kind
of fag?

no
i ain't no
fag.

well
buy a girl
a drink
then.

you willing to
revisit
the limiting tone
of your opening
salvo?
i smile
flashing a
peace sign.

sun before moon
errol flynn
sun before moon,
she says
and tells the bartender
to put a pitcher of rattlesnakes
on my tab.

- justin hyde

(added 01.27.09)

the bed

was in the living room.
my grandfather was in it.
he was dying from dehydration
not the inoperable liver cancer
from drinking a fifth or more daily
since the age of seventeen.
in the beginning the hospice nurse
allowed me to spoon him
shaved ice from a cup. but at that point
i was holding an ice cube and
letting it drip
on his cracked tongue
swelled up the size of a sponge.
he'd been silent for an hour.
suddenly he wanted to speak.
i grabbed the notepad
he'd been using to scribble goodbyes.
tried putting the pen to his palm
over and over. but
his eyes just slowly
floated like bobbers
across the ceiling.

- justin hyde

(featured in the poetry forum 01.27.09)

in the hospital waiting room

the little black kid
with a blotted out left eye
is leaning against his mother's leg
tugging at her jeans.

without getting out of her seat
or missing a second of her cellphone conversation
she picks him up
and leans him against a small wooden rocking horse.

he's past the age where he should be walking,
but he leans on the horse for a few moments
before falling down on his back.

his arms and legs
are slowly flailing like an overturned beetle.
his lips are moving
i can see bright pink gums,
but he's not making much of a sound.
just a low gurgling
somewhere in the back of his throat.

this has happened
five times
in the last twenty minutes.

a couple times
his head smacked the floor
pretty hard.

she leans him against the horse again
and starts sending
a text message.

the nurse comes out
and calls my name.

- justin hyde

(added 11.15.08)

gus

a black lab
flew up
out of the
i-80 ditch.

i parked my car
on the gravel shoulder
and ran across
both lanes of the highway
but he was
limp in the snow.

there was no blood

just watery bones
spilling from my arms
into the trunk.

took him
to the vet hospital
across from the fire station.
they said
he was dead
internal injuries.

i gave the vet my number,
the number on his tags
and took the tags
home with me.

left three messages
at the number on his tags.

week later
i paid a hundred bucks
to have him cremated,
put his collar
in my shoebox
and his
black name tag
on my keyring.

week after that
i got the
first message:

we're not mad at you
it was an accident
we understand
we just want his collar and tags back,
said a
kind female voice.

i erased it
without calling them back.

listen
you probably don't want to talk to us
but please send us the tags,
she said
leaving her address in texas.

erased that one
as well.

there's a little boy here
with a broken heart
who needs some closure
i hope you go to hell
you son of a bitch,
i played that last one
about fifteen times
then
erased it too.

- justin hyde

(added 11.15.08)

in the woods of northern wisconsin

i was racing cross country skis
in the woods of northern wisconsin.

can you believe that?

i was nineteen years old
wearing a one-piece lycra suit
suffering through thirty miles of
sub-zero undulating terrain in
the woods of northern wisconsin.

was i insane?

my heart was beating
189 times a minute
as i tried to defeat
thousands of
blood doping whippets
named sven and osvald
who had come
from as far away as
norway, finland and sweden
where apparently
cross country ski racing
is at least as popular as
bowling and minor league hockey
here.

is this poem going somewhere?

that was eleven years ago
- before my first piece of ass
- before they kicked me out of college
- before i turned right on lincoln way at the age of twenty-six with nothing to my name
- before i developed a debilitating addiction to on-line madden
- before i started fisting speed and humping anything that flashed me an angle and some things that didn't
- back when if you had asked me the name of a poet i would have struggled to produce even robert frost.

and?

sitting at the flying j
gut starting to bubble over my pants
it's hard to remember that far back.

so?

i think i wanted to be a
veterinarian at that point
a veterinarian or an
assassin for the cia

before i understood the fundamental disconnect between desire and follow through

?

what i'm saying is
don't be surprised if
maybe eleven years from now
i'll have undertaken the restoration
of church organs in
the belgian congo or

developed a one act play
from the
chinchilla's point of view.

- justin hyde

(added 11.15.08)

shit you salty dog

stephen
ran stamp press
at the ryko factory.

he was close to
seven feet tall
forehead like scripture
cinder block hands.

but he was a
big kid:

he'd de-pants people
standing in line
when hy-vee sold fried chicken
in the cafeteria
on wednesdays,

had this rusted out grand prix
pull donuts
like a teacup ride
in the gravel parking lot
after friday's shift.

i don't know how
it got around the plant
i had a college degree
in psychology

but

one day
at first break bell
he motioned me over
to the stamp press.

said
he'd heard
i was a psychologist.

told him
that wasn't exactly right
how i only had
an undergraduate.

he said
that didn't matter for shit
i was the closest thing
to a headshrinker
he knew of.

told me
his wife
had been laying in bed
going on two weeks

but she wasn't doctor sick,

just said she was tired
that was about all
he could get out of her.

don't bullshit me,
he said
and asked
what he should do.

i asked him
if there was anything going on,
any changes in their life.

told me
they'd recently found out
their daughter was pregnant
but that was a happy thing.

told him
i didn't want to speak for his wife
but sometimes a thing like that
can roll through a person
like a hundred sided die.

told him
ask her how she feels
don't offer suggestions
don't try to fix it
just listen

if it got worse
drag her to broadlawns
and ask to see a psychiatrist.

next day
he grabbed me
as i walked into the cafeteria
for lunch:

shit you salty dog
got my first knob-job in years,
he said
taking my breath away
playfully jabbing my ribs
with those cinder blocks
before putting me in a headlock
an kissing me
flat on the cheek.

- justin hyde

(added 10.19.08)

how i learned to shoot a gun

grandpa stood behind me
as i crouched
forearms rested
on his father's
headstone.

breath out slowly
squeeze the trigger
between heartbeats,
he said.

took me
two boxes of shells
but i finally drilled
my first
ground-squirrel.

*

good day for plinkin',
the sheriff pulls
into the small cemetery
on a hill
and calls out to me
from his window.

got a permit
for that pistol?
he asks.

no sir
i don't.

hey
you're fiester's grand-kid
arencha?

yea.

hell
i remember when that pistol
was bigger than you
what are you now
twenty?
twenty-five?

twenty-nine,
i say
zipping up my coat.

i ain't gonna
write you a ticket
but you better get a permit
if you're gonna fire that thing
outside a'
benton county.

yes
sir.

he pulls on
out.

i take the flask
from my jacket
pocket

finish it off

reload the chamber

&

put my forearms
back down on
grandpa's
stone.

- justin hyde

(added 10.09.08)

the mean queer

is an overnight janitor
at the
flying-j.

double-take ringer for
john wayne gacy

he's got this posse
of teenage queers
and fat chicks

takes hour long breaks with them
in the lounge:

jet-plane decibel
Will and Grace chatterbox shit
while i'm trying to write:

he brags about stealing beer
and being drunk on the clock

jokes about his big green dildo
named
the incredible hulk

smacks around the teenage queers
tries to be funny about it

says
he could kill any one of them
and get away with it.

when he gets up to piss
he makes one of them
hold down the walkie-talkie function
on their cell-phone
so he can hear
if they talk shit about him.

he's been gone for a week.

i ask jolene
the waitress.

she rolls her eyes
says they fired him
five nights ago
for stealing beer

how he pulled a knife
on the manager
said he was going to kill him
and his family.

burn the bodies.

- justin hyde

(added 10.02.08)

whisper 2000

i used to wonder
if the girls were talking about me
at recess.

i hoped the girls were
talking about me
at recess.

of course i couldn't ask them
couldn't look at a girl
without going red
and sweating bolts
from the face.

came across an ad
for the whisper 2000
in one of mom's
national enquirers:

made to look
like a little walkman,
plug headphones into it
and point.

stole twenty bucks from mom's purse

stalked the mailbox for six weeks.

bivouacked
on the jungle gym
and pointed it
at their little enclave
by the swing-set.

the girls were
not talking about me
at recess.

or anywhere
else.

- justin hyde

(added 06.22.08)

at the iowa state fair

walking around zombie
crotch of august heat
waiting for my girlfriend
to play trumpet
under the main tent
with the local college band.

land-locked huh?
he asked
one bench over
in front of the funnel cake stand.

looked like a plus size wilfred brimley:

red suspenders
no shirt
wheel-barrow gut,
giving cow tongue
to a waffle cone.

how can you tell?
i smiled
wiping sweat
from my brow.

written on your face
like a three-hour
sunday service,
he said

told me he was kenneled too,
his wife had strawberry jam
and pumpkin pie
entered in the competition.

i find this helps
finest corn whiskey
out of van buren county,
he said

told me it was
best chased with cold well-water
but prisoners have to make do
and handed me a flask.

you seen her naked yet?
he asked
putting the waffle cone
out of its misery.

yea
matter of fact
i have,
i said
trying to keep whiskey
from shooting out my nose.

she a keeper?
he asked
taking a hit
off the flask.

ass like a donkey
my friend
ass like a donkey,
i smiled
spreading my hands yardstick
while he
whistled low.

- justin hyde

(added 06.22.08)

when my uncle broke his leg

it was before noon
and he was on his
thirty-third beer.

i know it was before noon
because the small-town whistle
downhill from our campground
hadn't blown yet.

i know he was on his
thirty-third
because my cousin and i
were collecting the empties - -

we were gonna
ride our bicycles into town
cash em in for bottle rockets
after he and my dad passed out.

jim and i were
flicking matches into the fire-pit
egging them on to drink more.

my uncle was walking up the steep incline
from the cooler
thirty-third in hand
then he was moaning
flat on his back
clutching his leg (he'd broke it
five years earlier in a
drunk driving accident)

two grey haired female Emts
a few cookies shy of cankle-stew
showed up.

my uncle kept calling them
his sweet angels
reaching around
grabbing ass
of the one
at his head.

finally the park ranger and i
had to lift him
into the ambulance.

embarrassed the hell out of me.

but i was only thirteen

hadn't started drinking yet

and i didn't know that every man on that side of the family

myself included

has an overarching tendency to

fuck anything with a pulse.

- justin hyde

(added 06.22.08)

the iron worker

leaning against his truck
smoking a cigarette
waiting on material
for the new office space
one building over

as two stories above
i drink coffee
mixed with crown
and work my way
through schopenhauer's
madness.

the secret of blue collar work
few realize
and even fewer appreciate
is that your body might be
subjugated to machine
but you get to keep your
mind:

your hands might be
torquing a four-headed cap press
but upstairs
you're trying to figure
how in the hell karl marx
got socialism
from hegel

or

you might be on a hog farm
sitting backwards on a sow
draining a packet of boar semen into her cunt
while trying to
wrap your mind around
a priori knowledge.

i learned the hard way
white collar work
is nothing but
whoring out your mind
to insipidly pedantic
crossword puzzles

which

if you have more
than a lemming-compass
and base-ten blueprints
for a mind
is the equivalent
of daily bone-grafts
without anesthesia.

problem is
most of these blue collar guys
don't take advantage:

they work logic
and tiddlywinks polemics
off a handful of
crackhead premises

most of them
glass-eyed shriners
turning lifetimes
of zero-g figure eights.

this guy's cellphone
hanging from a
dale junior lanyard
and the set of
bright orange plastic testicles
dangling from the back bumper of his truck
tell me all i need to know
about which slope of the bell curve
he's nailed to.

- justin hyde

sitting on the grease trap behind taco bell

i was supposed to be
on a greyhound
bound for a fishing boat
in alaska

but i'd
walked past the station
and tossed my ticket
over the fence
of the
catholic school playground.

i was twenty six,
living in my parent's basement
after imploding as a bank examiner
for the federal reserve,

all my possessions
were in the hiking pack
to my left.

even as a young kid
in the trailer park
faking sick from school
for a little solitude

i knew
it was going to end
somewhere like this.

sitting there
on that grease trap
hum of tire
up and down lincoln way
i was surprised
i'd held things together
long as i did.

my old boss
from the bicycle shop
pretended not to see me
as he walked past
to his car.

serendipity,
i thought to myself

and laid back

and

closed my eyes.

- justin hyde

the lady cop

draws portraits
on the back
of wooden
mouse-traps
with exacto knives and
india ink.
can you believe it?
i didn't.

but she's got a
pile of them
on her
headboard.

i reach back
grab
one.

whose this?
i ask.

it's my
shift
captain.

you fuck
him too?

no -
i only fuck
artists.

i'm just a
half-brain
paraplegic heart
with a detachable
conscious,
i say.

no
you're more,
she says
then sings something
in french.

what's that
mean?
i ask.

it means you're
sui generis,
she says
flicking her tongue
across the head
of my dog
fast as a
hummingbird wing.

i grab the fifth
off her nightstand,
watch her
work:

she takes one ball
in her mouth,
growls like a tiger

pops it out,
then the
other.

who am i
to argue
that?

- justin hyde

momentary ceasefire on the way out

i pop the trunk
grab the telescoping
ladder
borrowed from my
father-in-law.

crawl up there
rip off the unused
satellite dish
from a previous
owner.

seth gives me
$25 and three
tall-boys
for it.

wife and i
get generic
baby-food
for ivan
and

share a frozen
pizza
in the empty
living room
before she
moves to her parents
with ivan
and i check in
at the y.

- justin hyde

at the ymca

my room
has a bird's eye
of the third street bridge
and the
des moines river.

one of my parolees
lives across
the hall.

guy like you
bound to land
on his feet,
galvin said
that first night
and introduced me
around.

i've got a picture
of my one year old son
duct taped
to the back
of my door.

my wedding ring
keeps thanking me
from the bottom
of the river

as

that pile of
aa pamphlets
on my desk
pulls
neck and neck
with these bottles of
vanilla
schnapps.

- justin hyde

all these freak-shows

it seems
the more outlandish
they dress
the duller they are.

for instance
two pancake-faced
wafers
next table over:

striped leggings
wooden plugs
in their ears,
airing out
freshly minted tattoos
of japanese calligraphy
on their shoulders.

i'm going on a
green-bean only diet,
buzz-clucks
the one.

i'm so with you,
clutter-spurts
the other
as

a gopher
in nigeria
locks up
from a
heart-attack.

i don't have any tattoos
or piercings,

don't even
wear a watch.

i should have glasses
but that's a
different poem.

if you pegged me at all
it would be for a
sloppily dressed
footnote,

which i'd gladly be
if it wasn't
for all the
voodoo-rickshaws
jackknifing
right here
behind these
eyes.

- justin hyde

next page >>