three poems

by Paul David Adkins

Arthur Herman Bremer, Using Lyrics from Johnny Cash’s Song I Walk the Line,

Comments After His Guilty Verdict in the Attempted Assassination

of Alabama Governor and Democratic Presidential Candidate George C. Wallace, Part 2

-- Looking back on my life I would have liked it if society had protected me from myself. – Bremer’s Statement at His Sentencing

My parents, drunk, indifferent as wallpaper.

My brothers, whoever they were.

No wife, no girlfriend, no stripper

I flipped every dollar for a flash.

What society did for me? 

Played a skipping song:

I find myself alone when -

I find myself alone when -

I find myself alone when -

That’s all it could offer, but police and a cell

and a record:

            Keep a close watch -

            Keep a close watch -

            This heart -

            This heart -

            This heart

Medusa Vesuvia Vespucci Looks at Death and Thinks

Ahhhhhhhh! So nice to finally die

and love myself for something.

I love the granite thumb I’m under.

My Catholic friends, afraid of life,

some booze, some dick outside their marriage.

But that’s when it’s the sweetest.

Everything was sweet in my hands,

but they were always empty:

midnight parking lots.

Empty as my work in the jacket factory:

zippers, buttons, thread, sewn for soldiers.

Do you think I gave a damn?

My flag was white, but they kept shooting,

my raised arms snagged in the machinery,

and this stupid body, jerking, followed.

Medusa Vesuvia Vespucci Discovers the Concept of Wagering

Quinella, perfecta, trifecta. The jockeys better

whip some glue off those nags!

You think I have $20 to waste?

I slice 500 yards of linen a day

for Montauk snobs

to spread some fucking tablecloth on Thanksgiving.

I don’t want excuses.

I want what I’ve lost:

my sight, two fingers,

a life of sweatshops and winks

at horny bosses for a nickel raise.

And if some goddamned horse

drops five bucks in my pocketbook

by breaking a foreleg at the finish,

I’m fine with that:

my back is made for turning.

Photo of Paul David Adkins

BIO: Paul David Adkins (he/him) earned an MFA from Washington University. In 2023, Backroom Window Press published his collection Sound and Fury. Journal selections include Badwater, Barzakh, and Spillway. He has earned two Best of the Net and six Pushcart nominations and the 2019 Central NY Book Award for Poetry.