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Good Luck With That
This collection by Don Boes features quick shifts in tone, subject, and language as a way to discover and track the moving targets of life. Each poem offers an experience based in serious wordplay and deadpan seriousness. Poem titles like "History of Appliances" and "Retain this Portion for Your Records" hint at the jangly conglomerations that we will read and enjoy and then read again.
78 pages, Paperback
First published February 13, 2015
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
March 14, 2018
We are the publisher, so all of our authors get five stars from us. Excerpts:
SOFT TARGET
One professor, sitting cross-legged,
continues his composition class
under the skimpy tree by the stadium
while his students reckon
the number of dogs and detectives
required to respond
to a bomb threat.
The semester is weeks old
but already the football team
has lost four games, two by shutouts.
Imagine jabbering
about paragraph development
in the exasperating sun. Better yet,
imagine listening to such jabber
while volunteers with megaphones
tell stragglers to pick up the pace
or run the risk of being buried
beneath tons of rubble.
Don’t all lectures make a little noise
and then go missing in the parking lot?
Only rookies think October
is too early to flunk out.
There’s no explosive device,
just a chagrined sophomore
who has a few issues
with his geography syllabus
and has assembled a scale model
of the administration building
out of paperclips. He lingers on the line
in case one of his score of enemies
wants to trace the call
or say hello.
WHAT’S LEFT OVER
Broken toe, pinched nerve in the neck,
strained ligament in one of my knees,
root canal: that’s my list of highlights
so far. If I want to be comprehensive,
I can add my midnight appendectomy
and, of course, my case of gout. And as a boy
I experienced one, maybe three concussions.
So I don’t attack the creepers
that cover the patio and one side of the garage
or paint the porch every four years.
So maybe that’s why I am seldom loud
like my neighbors. Last night they tossed firecrackers.
They poked hissing sparklers into their own shrubs.
A few harmless bullets entertained the clouds.
What scares me is what might be heading down the pike:
bifocals and biopsies and perhaps a hearing aid
and all my chow prepared in a blender.
Others will manage the paperwork. No health plan
will cover the trepidation. And what’s left over
will be no surprise: potato salad and defective fuses,
the glare and the shouts, the expense and the fallout.
SOFT TARGET
One professor, sitting cross-legged,
continues his composition class
under the skimpy tree by the stadium
while his students reckon
the number of dogs and detectives
required to respond
to a bomb threat.
The semester is weeks old
but already the football team
has lost four games, two by shutouts.
Imagine jabbering
about paragraph development
in the exasperating sun. Better yet,
imagine listening to such jabber
while volunteers with megaphones
tell stragglers to pick up the pace
or run the risk of being buried
beneath tons of rubble.
Don’t all lectures make a little noise
and then go missing in the parking lot?
Only rookies think October
is too early to flunk out.
There’s no explosive device,
just a chagrined sophomore
who has a few issues
with his geography syllabus
and has assembled a scale model
of the administration building
out of paperclips. He lingers on the line
in case one of his score of enemies
wants to trace the call
or say hello.
WHAT’S LEFT OVER
Broken toe, pinched nerve in the neck,
strained ligament in one of my knees,
root canal: that’s my list of highlights
so far. If I want to be comprehensive,
I can add my midnight appendectomy
and, of course, my case of gout. And as a boy
I experienced one, maybe three concussions.
So I don’t attack the creepers
that cover the patio and one side of the garage
or paint the porch every four years.
So maybe that’s why I am seldom loud
like my neighbors. Last night they tossed firecrackers.
They poked hissing sparklers into their own shrubs.
A few harmless bullets entertained the clouds.
What scares me is what might be heading down the pike:
bifocals and biopsies and perhaps a hearing aid
and all my chow prepared in a blender.
Others will manage the paperwork. No health plan
will cover the trepidation. And what’s left over
will be no surprise: potato salad and defective fuses,
the glare and the shouts, the expense and the fallout.
July 14, 2015
I received this book for free through Goodreads First Reads.
I didn't understand most of these poems. Many of them seem like a series of random thoughts all strung together haphazardly. My best analysis is that the poems are meant to reflect the odd and endless stream of thoughts that run through our minds during both ordinary times and extraordinary life circumstances, events, and crises. The poetry seems to describe the instability of life and of people and of objects, underlying the resolute march of time toward our inevitable deaths, with the underlying question "What is the point of it all?" permeating the book's pages. Having said all of that, it is quite possible that the meaning of these poems is way over my head (as interpreting obscure poetry has never been my forte). Despite my confusion, I found the book as a whole to be oddly entertaining.
I didn't understand most of these poems. Many of them seem like a series of random thoughts all strung together haphazardly. My best analysis is that the poems are meant to reflect the odd and endless stream of thoughts that run through our minds during both ordinary times and extraordinary life circumstances, events, and crises. The poetry seems to describe the instability of life and of people and of objects, underlying the resolute march of time toward our inevitable deaths, with the underlying question "What is the point of it all?" permeating the book's pages. Having said all of that, it is quite possible that the meaning of these poems is way over my head (as interpreting obscure poetry has never been my forte). Despite my confusion, I found the book as a whole to be oddly entertaining.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews