LatinosUSA

Previously published on MasticadoresUSA

RSVP

Your promises of paved horizons,
of 57 Chevys parked in bedrooms,
licking licorice curbs and no braking allowed.
A wrangler of illicit black holes,
space traveler in black jeans,
surfing lips of gravity waves,
tangled in un-unified shoe string theory─
I should be there if I don’t get tangled
and bound in parallel universes.
 
Questions of Etiquette

I no longer know what to ask:
your supernova against my Magellanic clouds.
So I look for something easy;
why are the leaves of the oak
growing beyond this window
such a deep green so the whole field
and the next valley are suffocating,
and I am left spinning deeper into a verdant vertigo?
 
The poem my 50 year-old son wrote
when he was in first grade:
 
not many people
mostly trees
and woods. not many
houses not many
things to do.
 
There is never an answer that satisfies
only a reaction and questions of a greener geometry.
 
I no longer know what is acceptable
except the trite where the only danger
is a suffocating boredom. Sure I’m quick,
spurs rattling through the dust
at the showdown on main street,
leather holster worn smooth,
half the bullets still ringing
the asteroid belt of Orion.
 
Acting Out

Gone from having tried too hard,
the town folk watch from second story
windows, crouching behind doors,
but it’s a shootout with an invisible man,
and when I slip, fall on wet-horse hockey,
it’s self-inflicted, and when I finally
stand, dusting off derision,
the pistol empty after shooting more holes
in the Big Empty, time begins again
as the deep-folded curtains are pulled closed.

Copyright © 2025 Walter Bargen
All Rights Reserved

Walter Bargen has published 26 or more books of poetry including: My Other Mother’s Red Mercedes (Lamar University Press, 2018), Until Next Time (Singing Bone Press, 2019), Pole Dancing in the Night Club of God (Red Mountain Press, 2020), and You Wounded Miracle, (Liliom Verlag, 2021). In 2023, he released Too Late to Turn Back (Singing Bone Press, 2023) and Radiation Diary: Return to the Sea (Lamar University Literary Press, 2023). He lives in Ashland, Missouri, with his wife and countless cats, raccoons, and snakes. He was appointed the first poet laureate of Missouri (2008-2009).