Issue
#1

January
2009

2 poems by David LaBounty

separation by history and degrees

no man is an
island and this
I figured out
in 1989 when
I was twenty-one
years old
and stationed
in Scotland
spying on the
Russians
and I had
spent an off duty
night drinking
about fifteen
pints of lager in
a pub in a
small and
meager Scottish
town where
everyone was
on the dole
and I
had gone
home with
this woman
old enough
to be my mother
and everything
on her was
sagging and I
was on top
of her naked
body all pale
and splotchy
and glowing
through the
dark as
if she was
fluorescent dough
and I was just
pumping away
all because
the Cold War
was waging,
all because
weapons
were pointed
here and there,
all because
Lenin and his
pals thought
they had a better
idea and overthrew
the tsar seventy
years before
and because
of Lenin and
Stalin and Thatcher
and Reagan, I
came and went
into her bathroom
of porcelain
stained and
chipped, emptied
all that lager
along with
some take-out
curry and yes,
the lager and
the sex and
the vomit
had to have
an effect
on somebody else.

© David LaBounty

I am not a Tom Waits song

but I am the
anonymous
homogenous
middle-aged
middle-class
face on the wall
with my debt
and large
screen TV
hiding my soul
behind the
flag on my
porch and God
leaves me
twisting there

wrapping my
soul with
water and cell
phone bills and

I got an
old girl
and kids and

that old girl

she keeps me
pretty much
fat and happy.

© David LaBounty

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