3/18/14
New Poetry: “No Girls in the Porn Store”

Did you even know there were poets any more? Well, there are. We know one, and he is awesome. He is Mark Bibbins. And he will make you believe in poets again. He will convince you that they are sexy and dreamy and powerful and relevant. His knew book, just out, is called “They Don’t Kill You Because They’re Hungry, They Kill You Because They’re Full.” See? How can you not love that? How can you not give it as a just-because present to someone you want to have sex with? Even if that someone is yourself.

Here’s a poem Mark Bibbins is graciously letting us reprint in these unpoetic digs of ours. If we’re lucky, maybe he’ll give us another one next week.

 

Poem that Wants to Use Revelation 3:16 as an Epigraph

 

A guy who was a regular
at the bar where I used to work

we called Peckerhead because
he looked sort of like a balder

Ginsberg, who looks like a pecker.
Well I have no idea how Ginsberg looks

now, but it’s probably pretty
peckeresque. Peckerhead drank dollar

drafts and was no doubt ten times
smarter than all us smartass bitchy

barmaids put together, maybe he
was a botanist or an actuary

or had some other clever gig. I felt kind
of guilty about it, even though we never

called him Peckerhead to his face, as far
as I know. Ginsberg died April 5 (1997),

birthday of Colin Powell (1937), so happy
b-day C.P. and happy d-day A.G. Inevitably

we would get loaded during our shifts, before
we killed ourselves or caught you-know-what

or left town before either of those things
or worse happened. Did I read somewhere

that Ginsberg fucked a guy who fucked
Whitman? Fucked/got fucked by? So stinky,

who cares. I must not see what fucking
is, other than stinky. If I had anything

to say about gender I’d already
be fucking you or paying Peckerhead

to fuck you. I think he was gay too.
All the girls we saw after work

at the porn store, their skin was
the color of a three-month-old

plaster cast. If I could make you
a real simile it would be like when

I turn into a boy I will wag
a pecker at you like a dirty mop

until it cracks and flops around like
my broken leg. No girls better

go there, Peckerhead always said,
no girls in the porn store.

 

Mark Bibbins’ “They Don’t Kill You Because They’re Hungry, They Kill You Because They’re Full” is available on Amazon.com.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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