CONFESSION
By John Garmon 

Forgive me my many sins
I didn’t tend the setting hens
I didn’t water and feed them well
They got up and walked away
Hungry and thirsty
Leaving their eggs unhatched

Of all the sins I have to tell
This one haunts me still
The lives I could have saved
You may think it was trivial
I don’t know how to explain
My negligence so murderous
The lasting of the pain

SUNBREAK AND MOONDOWN

Sunbreak and moondown
Morning of looking east
I saw mallards flying south
I thought how peaceful
Like getting out of prison
Only a few dollars to my name
Going out under a new sky
Everywhere mockingbirds
Bees around new roses
Sparrows taunting each other
Landing on fragile branches
Sorrows at bay for a while
Of a god abiding in sunbreak
Giving race for all

BUCKSHOT

Sleet drives down the dark street
A homeless man puts a shawl
Across his wife’s shoulders
And she sleeps
Or tries to sleep
Propped
Against a stucco wall
Behind an empty store
It’s getting cold
This time of year
Hunger this evening
Pelts her dreams
Like buckshot.
And the night
Crawls along
The alley
Like a cold snake.
And the moon appears to rise
From the mountains
Like a slow mirage

HERE IN VEGAS

Here in Vegas a homeless black man came up with what he said
Was evidence that Langston Hughes was a great ancestor of
The billionaire Howard Hughes who once was a famous man in Vegas
And famous throughout the world for many memorable things
What unbelievable news the local literati guffawed
The homeless man claimed the Hughes family
Hushed up the details of Howard and Langston’s kin
The homeless black man said his black grandfather in Texas was acquainted
With the father of Howard Hughes and actually knew the family
And in those days there was a slight chance of miscegenation happening
The details were sketchy and the local Vegas newspaper
Treated the story as the mad imaginations of an irresponsible indigent
However, the homeless man did not give up and one day came forward
To a crowd of curious onlookers who just wanted to laugh and ridicule
Undaunted the homeless black man gave a short speech
The reason Howard Hughes hated black people so much was not known
But I have it on good authority that Howard was highly indignant
About the hidden things that went on in the Hughes family which resulted
In that little drop of blood that joined the rich man and the poet
Everyone laughed about it and the whole thing was soon forgotten
But to this day depraved gossip mongers like me continue to wonder.

About the Author:

John Garmon's poems have been published in Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, Commonweal, Midwest Quarterly Review, Southern Poetry Review, Southern Humanities Review, and many other places. He is a writing assistant at the College of Southern Nevada, Las Vegas.