Poetry from Richard Weaver

Photo: Clarissa Watson

Take a word

Any word. Please.
Divide it by the square root
of a gravid bulldog bat.
Invert the hypotenuse
then shanghai your neighbor’s
Shetland pony. Divest
yourself of any stock
containing vowels.
Go to the nearest Catholic
church and confess to everything
especially if you are not now
or have never been Catholic.
Take hold. Grab your vestigial tail
and pull counterclockwise
as if you were a toilet
flushing in Australia.
When the water clears
accept more than your share
of the collective blame
for all unsolved crimes
of any date as far back
as 1044. When the head wounds
heal and the scars merge
to form new land masses,
make a collect call
to your mother’s mother’s
nanny. Be prepared to wait.
.

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Richard Weaver volunteers with the Maryland Book Bank, CityLit, the Baltimore Book Festival, and is the writer-in-residence at the James Joyce Pub. Recent pubs: FRIGG, Mad Swirl, Spank the carp, Adelaide, Dead Mule, and Magnolia Review. He’s the author of The Stars Undone (Duende Press), and, on occasion, admits to being one of the founders of the Black Warrior Review, and once upon a time its PE. His first ever publication was in the April 1975 issue of Poetry.