Clockwork
Clockwork
Poem by Sherry Chandler
Art by Tom Williams
Johnny, the grease
monkey, falls
flying, navigates
by the seat of his pants
through low-rent
lower terraces
of a jungle
well to the east
of Eden.
A practical eye
and clever
fingers
mousetrapped
the world
to his door
Let the holy ones
fight,
tongue prayers
for causes.
Let monks and hermits
wear hair shirts,
build and destroy
mandalas
of crushed
and colored stone.
Earthy ones
have other fish to fry
and need
a better pole
to land them by.
Manichaean battles bore
mechanics, the bore
of the rifle does not.
They mesh the gears
and coil the springs,
give tongue to plows,
maniacal devotion
to the sprawl
of flying buttresses.
Johnny has no truck
with flaming swords
or lost gardens.
He is as spinach
to the gut of the world.
-refers from the word fish in The Gull by Rose Auslander
Wonderful poem! I love the connections to my story — at “fish,” but also at “flying,” here in “Clockwork”:
“falls
flying, navigates
by the seat of his pants”
Glad you like it and the referral, Rose! This was a case where I selected the referral because I had Sherry’s poem from “Shape of a Box” and I just couldn’t leave it unpublished
I’m glad there’s a nice referral, too, Rose and Jessie.
Thanks for putting this out there, Jessie!
Thanks for letting me find a home for it, Sherry
How wonderful:
He is as spinach
to the gut of the world.
Love it!
Nice artwork to match a nice poem.
Thank you Rose and Helen!
Thanks Rose & Helen.
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