Hang a Left at the Beer-and-Bait

Elton Glaser Click to read more...

eltonElton Glaser has published eight full-length collections of poems, two of them in 2013: Translations from the Flesh (Pittsburgh) and The Law of Falling Bodies (Arkansas), winner of the Miller Williams Arkansas Poetry Prize.  "Hang a Left at the Beer-and-Bait" first appeared in Shenandoah 60/3.

I believe in the thunderbolt, not the weather map.
All around me, light scars the sky.

Readers of the purple page, sometimes I get so churchy
I kneel down to the bug zapper and the pork chop.

What kind of God requires us in order to be God?
Sir, my eggshell halo cracks at the cock’s first crow.

In the seesaw juju of the universe, lap and overlap,
I’m teased by the truth, like feathers on a fan dancer.

I should sit under the trash trees and wait it out.
Friend, can you spare me a hook and a bamboo pole?

I’ve got my own can of worms and lines enough
To snarl myself the world’s worst knot.

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