Two Poems

Tom Gribble

Time Untied and Took off Its Shoes

The porcelain doll made excuses for her sleepy habits

"I think I'm Joan of Arc or a Saigon whore. I resemble both a little"

She read Melville by storefront lights while rain slowed in clocks

North wind as cold as a saint's tomb brawled with people on black streets

A smoky twilight, a couple's tango into obscurity, "It must be Finland"

Winter's bare knuckled fist was raw like December's Moon

The hunger in ancient books seemed delightful when mixed with revenge

***

A Bookcase Mauled a Corner in an Otherwise Peaceful Life

She sat in the Barnes and Nobles all day long drinking coffee with Kate Chopin

Everyone passing took a piece of her to eat in mystery-novel aisle

With her in mind, cannibals told stories of exotic animals prowling Marlow's jungle

Right in front of her, a man handed a dead doll to a child and said, "Give baby a kiss"

She opened a book on Noah's obedience, and a man in a tuxedo stepped into the rain

On page twelve, absent-minded people misplaced their diamonds and gloves

On page thirteen, an orange haired man darker than Kafka held a stake to her heart

Bad luck in a large city or a vast ocean had its own color, "It's not purple"

Saintly women waited in line to pay for their unread chapters

"How could a girl fall only one story from her mother and be so unrecognizable?"

Thomas (Tom) Gribble received the Artist Thrust Fellowship for Literature. He earned an MFA in Creative Writing from Eastern Washington University in 1999. While in the MFA program, he was awarded the Associated Writing Programs Intro to Journals Award for poetry and the Kansas State University Graduate Poetry Award. His work has appeared in one hundred plus journals including Puerto Del Sol, Chattahoocee Review, and Hawaii Review. Tom produced a collection poetry, Interest Free Karma. He's the past publisher and editor of the literary journal Heliotrope (the one in the west), and he is the current managing editor of Gribble Press.

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