They Only Want You To Show Up So They Can Badmouth You When You Leave by Joe Sonnenblick

I believe so matter of factly in revenge that the soothsayers and Dionysian clerics of the world

are about as useful to me as a fart in the wind.

I’m akin to a policeman in that I want answers,

Do not question the method or the final product,

Nod at it and let me go to my sarcophagus in peace…

I hold contempt in my heart,

I want so badly for competition to exude through this meat suit during this creative wellspring,

There are no flower children sticking chrysanthemums in rifles in my sensibility

We are druids carrying the last person I talked to and dumping them over the cliffs of Gerizim,

I’m the whole promised land of the Jews incarnate

I do not spare the rod,

I will not look away.

That’s what poetry should be,

The vastness of how long this life is and it should be held firm by our greatest deities

Whether or not they breathe in this realm or the previous, or the next.

Then someone will mention Robert Frost.

Bio

Joe Sonnenblick is a Native New Yorker who was a regular contributor to the now defunct Citizen Brooklyn magazine. Joe has been featured in publications such as In Parentheses for their 6th volume of poetry and The Academy Of The Heart And Mind, and Impspire Literary Review, The Bond Street Review, Spectra Poets Issue 01, Throats To The Sky, El Portal, Burn This Motherfucker Down. Joe has read up and down the east coast and is shopping his first full book of poetry around to publishers.

@j.s._writing on IG

Author's note

This piece is about the underhanded nature and pretention of the New York, and more so Brooklyn poetry scene. it's been hijacked by ner-do-wells and those pretending Brooklyn didn't exist before they got here. A little slice of life. Enjoy it, everyone.