Two Poems By Michael Robbins

by Mark Bibbins, Editor

My Old Job

My name is Michael, I’m an alcoholic.
Hi, Michael. Row your boat ashore.
The Christian youth group is sudsing cars.
They get Raptured. They hit the bars.

Cathy Aspirin’s a karaoke machine
the size of Racine, Wisconsin.
Cathy, I think I left my uterus in your uterus.
I’d like to know what kind of response you get.

Maybe it’s Maybelline. Why can’t you be true?
You re-gifted the VD I wrapped up just for you.
My penis and my brain team up to penis-brain you.
It is now my duty to completely drain you.

Soap me down, children, I’m full of pain pills.
I was born in a barn. Some call it a manger.
The car wash washed in the blood
of the Lamb is full of rainbows.

Second Helping

I dare not speak my name, it is so long
and unpronounceable. I enforce the thaw
here among the timbered few. We despise you
and whatever you rode in on — is that a swan?
I’m not really like this. I’m over the moon.

Still, we jar marmalade. We plow.
We don’t need Neil Young around anyhow.
Your tribe’s Doritos are infested with a stegosaur.
That Forever 21 used to be a Virgin Megastore.

Scott Baio in full feathered glory
was everything I’m not. I am everything I am
and then some. I’m coming along nicely.
Don’t stick your fork in me till I’m done.

Michael Robbins’s first book of poems, Alien vs. Predator, will be published by Penguin any day now.

Ya like poems? Good for you. Here’s a whole bunch more. Eat up.

You may contact the editor at [email protected].