What We've Forgotten Because We Are Losers: A Poem by Jonna Beck

What We’ve Forgotten Because We Are Losers





“the rock feels no pain”

     and forevermore the threnody pushes time

miscolored zoo animals
     dance
a twelve step two step
in every room
in America

accompaniment:
     solo bassoon

all mothers weep
for show
as their masks
collapse - wet -

we are I
     who
“would rather cut
off my hair
than let it know
what
I am thinking”





sling seven signs at the moon
:a bra
:an old picture
:his ring
:a plate
:Fuck You
:the cat
:Silence

silence, the hardest of all
feels like an eighteen wheeler
running 70mph
the wrong way down a one-way street





Try Again.
Return the sweater for one that you can wash on your own.
No…no return, for the breadcrumbs were eaten long ago.

Computers speak:  If…Then,
but you don’t read the program before the Mahler Symphony No. 2.

      Here, kitty, kitty.

Prayer and supplication in real life means that a woman will submit to a man, and he brings home the cat, the ring, the plate, the picture, the bra, the fuck you, the silence, the dancing zoo animals…back into the sweatered house, but this can only be in her mind.





“Here comes the rain”

Summary: 
     images still move to retell
          forced parade toward
               The Pier

hospitals are full of people who’ve seen
more than they care to share

     I am alone inside
like a cat sharpening its claws
on the cover of a used copy of
                             Plath





elbow across the street

moisture licks testicular particles
     of stone

rise to the beat of natural
                          drums