Jake
Spent his days
Collecting cans
For another bottle
His liver was well
Overdue for
An oil-change
You could smell
It when he spoke
Jake
Spent his nights
Out front of the
Can return
Where they found him
One morning
Dead from exposure
Rorschach Blots
Sit in the tub till the water becomes cold.
Stare at the wall.
Ponder the complexities of the
Semicolon and
The weight of paper.
Remember when you left
A four color pen in your pants pocket
On wash day.
How all your clothes were
Spotted with ink—
Red
Green
Blue
Black.
Remember that the dryer
Was too.
Like Rorschach blots.
It’s apropos.
A metaphor.
Even when you try to
Keep up on the mundane
Tasks of living.
Even when you try to
Make things clean.
You make a beautiful mess.
Rusty Hipsters
D.W.I. culture is fashionable
here in the Rust Belt
native hipsters
with interlock systems
in their Subaru’s
only read Bukowski
and call him Hank
like they are old drinking buddies
and maybe they are
~*~
Nathanael William Stolte is the author of five chapbooks, A Beggars Book of Poems (Last First Press, 2015), Bumblebee Petting Zoo (CWP Collective Press, 2015), Fools’ Song (CWP Collective Press, 2016), Origami Creature (Ghost City Press, 2017), & A Beggars Prayer Book (Night Ballet Press, 2017) . His poems have appeared in Ghost City Review, Guide to Kulture Creative Journal, Five-to- One Magazine #thesideshow, Rusty Truck, Poems-For- All, The Buffalo News, The Rising Phoenix Review, Your One Phone Call, Trailer Park Quarterly, Le Mot Juste, In Between Hangovers, Foundlings Zine, Iconoclast, 34th Parallel Magazine, Poets Speak Anthology, & Plurality Press. He is the Acquisitions Editor for CWP Collective Press. He is also a copyeditor of Portrait: Literary Art Magazine, Buffalo States’ student-centered print journal. He was voted best poet in Buffalo by Artvoices’ “Best of Buffalo” in 2016. He is a madcap, flower-punk, D.I.Y. Buffalo bred & corn-fed poet.
