POEM OF THE DAY BY JACOB JOHANSON

A LUNAR OUTLOOK ON THE NEWS HOUR


every time i try to talk to the moon
about the news of the day
he just rolls his eyes
and reminisces about carson,
waits for me
to start talking about girls
because
having looked through enough windows
is convinced of his ideas
about what's really important anyway,
the moon wants a tuxedo
so he can crash weddings on his off nights
dancing with bridesmaids
and eating cake
the moon
couldn't care less about gun control
or the economy,
leaving those concerns
for the last burlesque dancer at armageddon
who he claims
was the first girl
that ever made him wish for a body
and a solid copy
of the karma sutra
the moon
just wants to have a good time,
maybe play a little poker
at the caesar's hotel in vegas
with baudelaire and dali
because he thinks it would be
one hell of an evening,
ending in the sort of poverty
he could tell his children about
the moon will point out
in utter despondency
the most action he ever gets
is when venus is aligned,
the damn tease,
leaving him with fantasies
of celestial collisions
and never-mind the aftermath,
he says
that sort of thinking
is what you get
from watching too much news,
gaining a taste for apathy
and a shortsighted viewpoint
the moon lays his head
on the the dawn
stretching,
reminds me
he'll be back tomorrow
and he expects
so will the rest of the mess.


-Jacob Johanson

POEM OF THE DAY BY ABIGAIL BEAUDELLE

DINOSAUR FACTORY



The first time
I saw a grain elevator
chipped-tooth white in the sun
outside Kansas City
I was East -
Coast-Ignorant,
the magnitude of a nation's
hunger presenting itself
like a dinosaur factory,
huge and ungainly in the light.

nearly 160 million acres
plowed under in one generation -
the Flint Hills remain
one of the last bastions of the American Prairie,
too much shale, flint
limestone renders it unworkable
we let it be -
give it national preserve status,
call ourselves conservationists.

Beneath the surface
prehistoric sea creatures
bed down in stone
at the center of our nation.

ii.
Topological landmark in a seabed
state -
the grain elevators
straddle the landscape -
pelvic remnants of biblical giants;

displaced small gods
congregate like
caveblind amphibians
in their shadows, they

remember what the land
was
weep silent
for dying bees -
remember
what the land was
weep silent
for lost butterflies

Buffalo specters
drift past Quicktrip parking lots
their glassine torsos
framing sandwich signs
coffee and glazed donut
$1.95 + tax
raise their heads
at the scent of wheat.


-Abigail Beaudelle