Keith Higginbotham 


Another World

head / a chaos drum / the air faced 
ranted sandwich /  I mean 
the irony / not windows / or doorways 
covered trapped black in 
my leaves / I am a cigarette poem
biked past the town’s hole 
of lawns / faraway eyes / paper on 
words / a sky couple leaves churned 
crashing sheets / factory chain 
a runway cartoon or
sun scraps / erased kitchen / my made 
bed through the syllables 
/ in my metal throat / just the paper 
throat  kid / and I memorized a head /
now the bridge is stoned / an undead 
town’s a paper gesture / town’s
a dialect / robotic lawns hopscotch 
into radios trapped in cold air



Gawk Score

comet caked mole flute 
head first bugs lake bag 

asleep steel crushing nothing
the chopped smell of splits

knee deaths
bone bone

the pirating plants
on groaning lawn moon veil

the chandelier head on
the angry doll of Kentucky



Glass Country

Splintered coat down right through us: a thinner 
spoon, nothing on it— my listening eye went 
all dollop, 
               	ticked now with a time bunting like a 
               	nightgown turned gleaming busy curled 
bright as his mulberry castles.

The boulder moved the land turned lost the thunder fell
burning empty— mad and quivering white. A handful
               	of lawn a kicked tree rising nothing in
               	a chest his catcher’s fraud talk pink seats
into screaming stairs our loose mother sun.



Hostel Chairs

curved luggage tablets 
with or without facts the 

destination screen night 
the body-sponge the fodder

stitch with chimes 
fog of cargo

a general verge inside
my un-insides



Groucho Marx Proposes to Truman Capote on the Dick Cavett Show

Groucho Marx feels left out 
of the conversation between 
Truman Capote and Dick 
Cavett, even though Capote has just 
come out, and he and Dick Cavett 

have spoken only a a few sentences 
to each other. Groucho Marx talks 
about rats and asks Capote if he wrote 
a book about living in a tree, and Capote 
says he did. Groucho starts talking 

about his brothers. Dick Cavett asks 
Groucho if he thinks Truman
Capote is dominating the conversation. 
Groucho talks about Ring Lardner 
getting drunk and writing holed up 

in the Pennsylvania Hotel in
New York, and Capote says he doesn’t think 
anybody can write and drink at the same 
time, at least not anything good, and Groucho
Marx says that he isn’t currently doing any 

writing or drinking. He thinks Truman should 
get married, for the tax breaks. Capote tells
Groucho to find someone for him
to marry and he’ll consider it. Groucho
says he’d marry Truman 

Capote in a minute if he’d write another “hit
book” like he did about Kansas. That’s when 
Groucho Marx formally proposes to Truman 
Capote, but Capote says that 
Groucho is too old for him.

Keith Higginbotham’s latest poetry book, Chainsaw Gender Reveal, is forthcoming in May. He is also the author of Calibration (Argotist eBooks), Theme From Next Date (Ten Pages Press), Prosaic Suburban Commercial (Eratio Editions), and Carrying the Air on a Stick (The Runaway Spoon Press). You can find his artwork on Instagram (@jkeith2f) and all sorts of other stuff on his Twitter account (@ohaikeith). He lives in South Carolina.

 
 

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