Jeff Dahlgren


The Same Cereal Box

Borrowed time on the crime belt, I'm an elderly accountant,
where the trains smoke the candle lit table into a new oblivion
for this guy couldn't get out of his own head and mud tracks

She looked at him from across the bowling alley, ex-nurturer
with fervor and inna smoky stupor, needing Bounce from Target
The milk soured on the floor of the murdered family's home.

Almost in time for like, don't like the gray weather, and fish cartoons.
Chumps on mobiles, sirens, red rocks, inspire the attention of no ideas
but ideas about paranoia, I swear to god I will, I didn't want to have the baby.

New fresheners exhibited in the temples' parlors. They had had
CNC operators, they were kissing the magnetized onus of profile pictures,
can you hear me from over here, in the dark, pain of wanting to mean something.



Luckiest Man Alive

I'm an elephant now, shingles and tar, my ax was basically ruined
before we could bury the crawdads in the sand next to the water moccasin hole.

Pythagoras and Iphigenia walked all day, a slave in her kitchen with a stupid grin.
We bought more lottery tickets before heading off to the store.

Anciently weak, the energy to pookie, tug the bloated reformed coroplast sign
she thought was intended for entertainment purposes.

Astrologists came back from a home monitoring system, it was this,
and this was pretty sure of this. Hey. You wanna go get some ice cream? I'm kidding.

You can come over right now if you want to. I'm talking to you.
Larvae become the oldest in line, fortitude and lucid, the trail runs dry.

It might, with dynamite and the company's firm agreement
within the safety meeting guide lines, be for dominoes in prison's sense, an aisle of sliced blankets.

Where were those socks on the trees and telephone poles?
Saying a whole lot of nothing and being filled with nothing are two different things.

And in the end. Shank and pendulum style.
Eleven governments came and went along the decade following the coup.

The location is under the tree. I gather pigment and write on myself,
what's the obligation to arguing with yourself?

Like the Internet, the location of the tree
you sit under matters as much as it doesn't.



This is not about you

Clean your alphabetic heart wide open crystal spigots, she would
And she would effuse like in art, for personal reasons, like on romance novels,

Eraser residue settles, lost in convenience, longing by
splitting hairs, speed reading, attention deficit, showcase the crumbling,

Don't you hate it when people address the moment?
Where I hear about you affects my perception.

Sediment smirk wet skin words, what lies are supportive?
White bangs, servant chains, gangs love & sluttish,

Clank up neon ranks, blast icons, a bag of plastic relics.
more psycho more flora than a cracked clastic Los Angeles mosaic,

A harbor waxes washes why palms to the moon,
Eve's drop on people who could focus so they never questioned too much.

Or the opposite of writing, a meat coma, sore feet on 6th street.
Meat Coma. I don't know. I don't know.

One that inspires others to build statues of her, and like that, they do.




Jeff Dahlgren (aka Eggtooth) is a poet, visual artist, and performer from the Atlanta area now living in Austin TX. He’s published in The Lattice Inside: An Atlanta Poets Group Anthology (UNO Press, 2012). In 2010 he curated VISPO, an international visual poetry exhibit, at Eyedrum Art & Music Gallery, where he served as the chair of the literary committee. On any given night he might be found providing improvised vocals for a noise band, participating in a writing group, producing poems on demand (for donations), or drinking coffee. He works in signs.
 
 
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