"A Line from Jukka-Pekka Kervinen," "You do not need to put it in a plastic bag," and "Otherwise, all at sea"
A line from Jukka-Pekka Kervinen
Hatred of soft con-
stitutes what? Is this
called character? Reason
says no, though I went
this way before, once,
my crew with wax
in their ears & me tied
to the mast. Now I am
alone in a small dinghy
abandoned even by
the birds. Strongwilled?
Or merely driven mad
by the song the jukebox
in my mind keeps play-
ing over & over until
I can hear it once again?
You do not need to put it in a plastic bag
We have lined our playaway
tops to make them heat up
quickly, enough to melt & pop
a balloon. Men might find it
baffling, but the kinetic energy
helps us pipe melted white
chocolate so it can be x-rayed by
officials when passing through
a security checkpoint, or, later,
be mistaken for food by wildlife.
Otherwise, all at sea
Someone has gifted me an
astrolabe. I use it to determine
the distance between the end
of one line & the next. Its
ethnicity changes daily. Is
determined by the type of
headgear it chooses to wear.
Today it is a pillbox hat. I open
it up & select a Quaalude. I've
read somewhere that's one of
those small countries in Central
Asia. It sounds exotic but brings
me down. Sometimes the astro-
labe cooks dinner, sometimes
it doesn't. Then we go out. It
has a real thing about eating
takeaway, says it's beneath it
to do so. I offer to marry it.
It refuses, totally turned off
by the idea of home delivery.

Mark Young’s first published poetry appeared over sixty-two years ago. Much more recent work has appeared in RIC Journal, Scud, Ygdrasil, Mobius, Offcourse, SurVision, BlazeVOX, Don’t Submit!, & Word For/Word. Mark recommends the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society.