Kenneth Pobo At Zombie Logic Review

Here are four great poems by Kenneth Pobo. 



SPACKER REVISITS MICAH

A freshly painted sign 
welcomes drivers into a town 
of 1236 people and 

12 churches.  Micah’s high school 
hasn’t quite collapsed yet.  A town 
square died into a Wal Mart.  Broken 

beer bottles pay homage to 
the statue of W.D. Pengraft, 
the founder.  I grew up here--  

I’m a washing machine 
on a rickety porch used 
only for holding an iced tea glass. 


SPACKER BELIEVES IN GOD, BUT

His God shows himself to be real 
when a gun fires.  
In the richochet Spacker finds God.    

His mother thinks Spacker’s 
an atheist.  She frets that his soul 
will be a leaf burning
forever.  Ask him and he’ll tell you 

he hates atheists, thinks 
they should be shot.  
By his God.  

Then they would know the truth.


SPACKER AND THE MISSIONARIES

The doorbell rings.
Two airbrushed and earnest
young men.  Surprising himself,

he lets them in—they open 
a book, explain why we have
physical bodies.  Spacker 

informs them that he’s about
to shove an ice cream scoop 
down their throats--

prayer-stained suits get in a car, 
a cell phone dropped 
in fading tulips.


ON MY LIST

Whenever Spacker gets angry,
and that’s almost all the time,
he finds a culprit, says,

“You’re on my list!”
This long list includes 
the dead.  He thinks of his 

list as a broken-down bus
rusting five miles out of town
in Kregar’s field.  Someday

everyone on it will end up
in that bus.  The people,
even God, will spend the rest

of their lives looking
out of broken windows,
eating smelly bag lunches,
  
Spacker sitting in
the driver’s seat trying
to start the engine again

and again, but it’s too
far gone.  The traveling
salesman sky has no clients.

Kenneth Pobo has published four books and over a dozen chapbooks. He teaches creative writing at Widener University where he does a radio show each Saturday called Obscure Oldies.