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Poetry by Jenkin Benson

In Colfax, Iowa

a truck      drove
through a kum      & go
some red      some throat
drunk      off-couth

broke gland      he pooled
pantera tat out      the
fucked      he’s
hostile      “yous uhhh

git and      gone
your dead ass      gone”
and unlucked      and grassed
toothless      outta abase

a best      concussed
meatwound     cement
goodbyes     to
a     man’s word

White Heat (The Year Maytag Left Jasper County)

unwashed     fluchfolk
     gross-paque
     caressing
     37 in checking

blue cheese     blue nitrates
     felon
     hue executed
     by detergent

the moving
     shaking fucksters
     skeeter summering
     they     fled

they     sold
     surrendered wine cellars
     their double quarter gardens
     angel-cocked fountains

county of
     crushed fingernails
     factory
     of filed     of rupt

the worse metal
     recycled cents
     no potlucks
     left     to fund

refusing stocks
     pitiable     tons
     translucent
     townies

flit from
     hinterland     to butchery
     no guns just pens
     still killed

Maureen’s Oxygen Tank Delivery Service

a contraption     a bomb
a flare so dear
indecipherable
barometer

13 kids     13 tarfoul tons
of soot     the war
in raccoon river     in townhouse
in pea soup     no strength

potato roots     spindle
canisters     they
feed on cylinders
surcursing     purplebating respirers

she pare parses
     the oxidizite
mistaking dish soap
for cranberry juice

when air     glides
too purely     it shrinks your lungs
the heft of a life tank
settled hale     so stuck

Jenkin Benson

Twitter: @jenkinwithouts

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