“DID STAND-UP FOR THE FIRST TIME”, “dRESSING NEOLIBERAL THIS CHRISTMAS”
DID STAND-UP FOR THE FIRST TIME
The underdog in me is a complete bullshitter don’t listen,
but listen. What can I swipe for you: this crowded C train? Two?
Surely not all of New York pop. 44 million where the rich too
become meat. Comedy is people—I exclaim too late—people
and there are casualties. 12:42 AM and in this joke the eagles are
clinging to their sticks and there are cops wearing bad-pants
to the touristy stand-up show. The one about the sad ham in
the rain walks into a barn doesn’t land. Workshop or kill.
DRESSING NEOLIBERAL THIS CHRISTMAS
Grasping for straws to throw over the counter in a poem
about the endangered giraffe I’m all chin all hold-over
oversharing in what by all accounts is an aftermath.
Look at me I’m the last dried rose petal on the table-cloth:
the crumb and the shadow of the crumb and god the horrible calm
of the fascism sometimes. 10:13. Another dead girl at the border,
and brunch is better than a personality. I am not going to your 5k.
Too early in the day for your shit-post about cleaner streets, Satan. I’m dead.
Mark Gurarie
Mark Gurarie is the author of one full-length poetry collection, Everybody's Automat (The Operating System, 2016), and his poems and prose have appeared in Sink Review, Public Pool, Everyday Genius, Ghost City, The Culture Crush, Publishers Weekly and elsewhere. He holds an MFA in Poetry from the New School, which, in 2012 published Pop :: Song, selected by Major Jackson as the winner of its Chapbook Competition. A freelance writer and adjunct professor, he splits time between Florence, MA and Brooklyn, NY, and plays bass guitar in New York-based indie rock band, Galapagos Now!.
Twitter: @chewspoppers