After I, a Nervous Nellie, Watch a Bad Boy Family Reunion Concert
When I step into a room, I want to be Pam-from-Total cool:
not melting, but schooling the atmosphere, a self-shouldered battle,
a rocker’s reverb, trop bon, son, down-down sound beneath my sole.
Stance: feet a moonscape apart, that sideways sleepy lean, fingertips
Double Dutching to the bass, double skank, what me gon’ do-woo.
Pam-from-Total cool: like Cyan Cycle™ “Low Rider” in the dusk
of Amsterdam, bam! Glock-banded belt, solo-spy male review, a Morpheus Hindu
puddle-pushing, scratching metallic turntable, steady swivel. I could yank up
my juju, reverse the room & still backwards boom! Scrub away gloom,
self-recluse. Strike shines to the beat! I’m talking slow-motion spilling,
time-twisting priest telekinesis. I’m moving harmony thugs, boys bundled
in bones, humming a hood song. Arms buoy in a whole-body hairdryer until
hair cockatoo. Bird, I’m my own news, claim me that cool
Pluto-filtered, conceit-covered rock. Funk robbed me, but acres more from this
song-son that came from. I’m a cinnamon-dipped xylophone luring a lusty calf-
jolt, an artic head drop towards the pipe, low sway like dice with my chin
seesawing, three-quarter grin. Swagger, where you been?
Drop a coffin on the cassette; Stream, I ain’t rewinding, sweep past
recollections of my chin in chest, when I was a second-class guess,
a scary staccato in a jammed-up room; a dark dealer of apprehension,
nervously dub-stepping. Newsflash: I’m worth every bouncy molecule
Let me spin it dirty, this topside to downbeat, a funky neon green, hind legs slink
like Gateway Arch — planet’s tallest half-ring no one can’t swipe; I’m badass
breeze under my knees, drip- drip over my entirety, a cool osmosis, hydraulic
stance. Vim, goddammit: ooh, like a newfound sobriety!
OAK MORSE lives in Houston, Texas, where he teaches creative writing and theatre and leads a youth poetry troop, the Phoenix Fire-Spitters. He was the winner of the 2023 Julia Peterkin Literary Award for Poetry in South 85, a Finalist for the 2023 Honeybee Poetry Award and a Semi-Finalist for the 2020 Pablo Neruda Prize for Poetry. A Warren Wilson MFA graduate, Oak has received Pushcart Prize nominations, fellowships from Brooklyn Poets, Twelve Literary Arts, Cave Canem’s Starshine and Clay as well as a Stars in the Classroom honor from the Houston Texans. His work appears in Black Warrior Review, Obsidian, Tupelo, Southern Indiana Review, Los Angeles Review, among others. www.oakmorse.com
The art that appears alongside this piece is by GRANT RAUN.
