8.9 / September 2013

At The Learning Annex

[wpaudio url=”/audio/8_9/Redmond.mp3″ text=”listen to this poem” dl=”0″]

I drop out of night school.
I go to the chop shop instead.

I have things that need cutting:

a new fang, a sore hoof
for the rasp.

I watch a man in a mask
with one huge eye
wield a small flame.

He calls it the burn
victim mask.

He makes an incision.
All day he does this.

He stands and sweats over
many raw metals.

He strokes a silver tongue
against anything
that will give up the solid.

The eye is so big and black
and fills his whole face with the glass
of its unblinking appraisal.

I go back to school.
I have trouble with math

and simple word problems
and the part about which side

declared war
on the other and why;

the part about putting things back
together after

you’ve broken them down.


Jim Redmond is currently working on too many projects for any of them to work. He wants to move south. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in TYPO, The Pedestal Magazine, RHINO, Leveler and Front Porch Journal. He recently graduated with an MFA from the University of Michigan.
8.9 / September 2013

MORE FROM THIS ISSUE