Keith Higginbotham


Sal Mineo

sal mineo was made of clay
as illusive as a poem sal mineo
was from the dark future
he grew on the paper the poem
was written on and sal
mineo was the capital
of inevitability the captain of
unknown spaces sal mineo was
both a son and a daughter
sal mineo played one on TV
and when it was time sal
mineo bombed his own
house in the hills sal mineo rode
a horse into the town
sal mineo was kind to the poor
and never asked for what
was coming and eventually sal
mineo took off all his clothes



Jersey

a fish of milk
filming the pretty
soap on trains

a naked swoosh
old-time
splattered in the godhead

poisoned
christ-forced evenings
on wheels



The Next Best Thing

designer skin for the people
words cutting up a clone’s breath
each stands & floats in knives

unremarkable & un-distant
this head core is a straight-up sensation

stone mammals peak the chest
unheard of they were
glass feet slaughtered with boys



Bomb Threat

Head influenced: a night. Burning flowers flat
on my witness flag. Arabesque be the departures.

Thrown every which way, the window can
polish into being. Particulars are blind

as grinding burned in the speculation. It all translates
roughly as a jab to the side ballet of American

tropes, the screaming American blade. A hundred-
fold justices can’t guess the metaphor.




Keith Higginbotham's publications include Grace Notes (illustrator) (Unknown Press), Calibration(Argotist eBooks), Theme From Next Date (Ten Pages Press), Prosaic Suburban Commercial (E∙ratio Editions), and Carrying the Air on a Stick (The Runaway Spoon Press). He lives in South Carolina, U.S.A.
 
 
previous page     contents     next page