the houseplant is cosmic to you i imagine
you thought you wrote “Kubla Khan” i xanadu
you walking away from a landslide you
caused in the planetarium trailer-parks in
hurricane lane never heard of you, i imagine
why complain of the tridents or avalanches?
you are a used-car salesman i indoctrine
you swimming through an Alabama graveyard
dontja dontja? the waboosh template
four bubbles just swam up my beer bottle
so dissident let’s snowboard across
a wave of ashen bones mass graves
of theorems plastic hall of masks
mainly the helmets of hazmat I imagine you
prog you buzz you punk you
soft as a maggot hard as a coffin nail
psychonaut in a backwash hydroplane
you have major sinthomes i imagine your
mirror it’s a screaming cicada swarm
ancient sonar of the owl its head swiveling the
other/other a compass in an armoire
never touched a compact and a lipstick
never opened sea glass on a bathroom
saucer you, Freudian on the toilet
Joseph Victor Milford is a Professor of English and a Georgia writer who is currently working on his EdD doctoral studies. He was born in Alabama in 1972, and he went on to receive his Bachelors degree from the University of West Georgia, in English and Philosophy, and then his MFA in Poetry from the Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa. His first collection of poems, Cracked Altimeter, was published by BlazeVox Press in 2010, and he is presently composing a collection of poems with Hydeout Press, forthcoming in 2015. He is also the host of The Joe Milford Poetry Show, where he has compiled an archive of over 300 interviews and readings with American and Canadian poets. He is also a member of the Southern Collective Experience.
