Three Poems

Joe Wenderoth

05.08.16

film-rolls

Life Coach Speaks To Small Boy

 

Here is what you do:

Get a freezer.

Learn where and how to hunt.

Hunt.

Fill your freezer with exotic meats.

Enroll in a culinary arts School

and master those arts.

Enroll in photography School

and learn to make beautiful pictures.

Cook one of your exotic meats—

it doesn’t matter which—

and display it on your best table

at the height of day.

Photograph the meat,

capturing its delciousness.

Repeat this process

until your refrigerator is empty

and your rolls of film are exhausted.

Go into your dark room and develop your film.

Display at least one photograph

on every wall in your house.

Now you are ready for guests;

now you can sleep in the knowledge

of what is beautiful, and wake

with the power to ignore the beautiful,

and to thrive.

 

 

 

 

Why I Don’t Write Much

 

The more you write

the more you understand your voice,

and the more you have forgotten:

you don’t have a voice.

 

I want to be able to hear,

if hearing ever becomes relevant,

something more pressing

than my own voice.

 

 

 

 

American Prayer

 

vision

to the tired sniper

muscle

to the humming grave

diggers

—————–

Joe Wenderoth has numerous numerous publications. Numerous. He teaches at UC Davis, where police keep order with pepper spray. he is invisible.