Alex Grant

At A Writers’ Conference,
I Stand On A Pregnant Woman’s Foot

- then compound the misery by telling her
that this would be a perfect title for a poem -
thereby breaking the cardinal rule of never

assuming pregnancy unless you can actually
see the baby’s head emerging. This all occurs
while I’m waiting for the famous poet to call,

my expectations receding faster than a sliptide,
and weighing the possibility of sloping off
to a neighborhood bar to smoke like a fiend

and practice being slightly drunk again – any
thing to crimp my candy-store-kid reaction
to this fine body of writers, whose thick blonde

hair and black-jeaned legs collide and curve
like undiscovered continents in a red leather chair
at three o’clock in the afternoon, and soon

I’ll be swirling through these halls, loose-
slipped mind wriggling like some luscious,
freed idea swimming through damp corridors

toward the momentary ripeness of the egg.

Spring 2006

DOWN IN THE WOODS AGAIN

    You can't write poems about the trees
    when the woods are full of policemen -
    Bertolt Brecht.

In the interview room, The Three Bears perch
on plastic chairs. Behind the one-way mirror,
Goldilocks fidgets with her cellphone – she’s
expecting a call from a myth-based reality show,
and doesn’t want to be caught napping. Daddy
Bear is becoming fractious – if only he hadn’t
gotten so heavy into porridge, things could have
been different – but the Quaker salesman had
been so persuasive, given him the odd taste
once in a while, and before they knew it, those
fucking nuts and berries had lost their sparkle.
And then there was the unsecured loan on the
bedroom furniture - not to mention the mortgage
on the cottage. When you factored in the twelve
grand he’d anted up for the 65-inch plasma, it all
started to look like one of Grimm’s. “You realize
your credit-score barely makes 600” the lieutenant
sneered – those bastards, they really knew how to
kick a bear when he was down. He could see three
faint, shiny circles the lieutenant’s steam-iron had
imprinted on his shirt – he’d obviously never taken
the time to check out the November 1998 flat-iron
appraisal in ‘Consumer Reports.’ He felt nothing
but contempt for this man – he imagined him
naked, and guessed he had a very small portfolio,
something his wife had resented for years. “The
blonde – what do you know about her?” – the
lieutenant’s face was almost touching his muzzle.
“I could see she had no visible means of support”
he almost growled – “even Baby Bear noticed that.”
It was going to be a long night. The lieutenant’s
deodorant was kicking up a notch, as promised,
Mama Bear was quietly cataloging every mis-step,
and Baby Bear was busy sneaking sly glances
at the one-way mirror, his thoughts elsewhere.

FOR A GOOD TIME, CALL JESUS

In the Holy Victory Motel,
   on the outskirts of Fuquay-
     Varina, my divine moment

of epiphany seems to be
   fast approaching. If it’s
     true that I really am God,

as the message scrawled
on the toilet switchplate
    in black indelible ink is

telling me, we just might
   be in for a very long ride.
     I watch the rain bouncing

on the red pavement, feel
   thirty years and too many
     miles condensing in black

puddles – it all looks the same
eventually, somehow. A cut-
    down truck skites sideways

across a puddle, pirouettes
   twice, nails the front end
     of a silver-fendered, ancient

brown Buick - radiators hiss
in unison. I feel tired. I read
      the switchplate divination

one last time, kill the light,
   fumble hopefully towards
     the Bed of Christ, the soft

pillow of Christ, the wake-up
   call and full tea and coffee-
      making facilities of Christ.

THANKSGIVING

To test a jet engine’s resistance
to bird strikes, a supermarket
turkey is flung into the churning
turbine and photographed
in stop motion, as it is cleaved,
frame by frame, like bologna
on a rack. No feathers, no blood,
just prime white meat, bone
and hormones. I look on
in dumbstruck wonder,
thankful that these people
haven’t tried to make sex
any safer than it already is.

Alex Grant’s chapbook, Chains & Mirrors won the 2006 Randall Jarrell Poetry Prize and received the 2007 Oscar Arnold Young Award(best book by a North Carolina poet.) He was the 2006 winner of the Kakalak Poetry Prize (2007 Kakalak anthology Special Guest Contributor) and the 2004 winner of WMSU’s Pavel Srut Poetry Fellowship. He has been a semi-finalist for Tupelo Press’s Dorset Prize and finalist or runner-up for The Pablo Neruda Poetry Prize, The Felix Pollak and Brittingham Prizes, Discovery/The Nation, The Arts & Letters Rumi Poetry Prize, The Writers at Work Fellowship and The Sunken Garden Poetry Chapbook competition, among others. He was one of fifty poets selected for Meridian’s 2007 Best New Poets anthology. His poems have recently appeared or are upcoming in Arts & Letters, The Nation, Connecticut Review, Seattle Review, North American Review, Nimrod, Sycamore Review, Cream City Review, Kaleidowhirl and Poemeleon, among others. He lives in N.C., and divides his time between Chapel Hill and Carrboro, where he lives with his wife, his dangling participles and his Celtic fondness for excess.

His work has recently appeared or is upcoming in The Nation, Connecticut Review, North American Review, Sycamore Review, Cimarron Review, Arts & Letters, Poetry Southeast, Eleventh Muse and Poemeleon, among others. He works up and down the eastern seaboard for a not-for-profit healthcare organization and divides his personal time between Chapel Hill and Carrboro, where he lives with his wife, his dangling participles and his Celtic fondness for excess.

"Body Language"

by Jennifer Balkan

current - submissions - archives - contact us