Brad Garber
Disclaimer
If you have heart disease or risk factors like wanting to remove your air tank while diving or sprinting in front of trains or if you have an erection for more than eight hours while driving an 18-wheeler for more than twenty hours or if you break out in boils whenever you hear a Journey song and if you feel as though you have been a tank and everything has been thrown into you like the ocean and that your gut resembles how grain in a farm silo mixes into a vinegar concoction consult your doctor and your priest and most of your “friends” on Facebook and consider reducing the number of milligrams of whatever you’re on at the moment and then blood dope for six weeks in the mountains of Italy until you can see the glass of wine before it hits your teeth but this is not a problem unless your pores open up six months later and your intestine prolapses in which case you should discontinue the use of Relaxa entirely and start taking Frenexa after bedtime because you may develop severe reactions to incandescent lights and you should not take it while nursing anything including small children and headaches and resistant bacterial infections but if you take Relaxa with a tall glass of straight bourbon on a nightly basis you may feel euphoric and like you can say anything you want at serious business meetings and throw imaginary grenades at passing cars as long as insurance coverage is available without deductions or limitations on preexisting conditions such as psoriasis farting or toe fungus in which case Frenexa also made available by the very same drug company may be available with unexpired coupons written excuses from mother or acting out in very violent and strange ways
Listening to Brazilian Beat
in the wilderness of Oregon like this thing that takes you away to another place but you’re already in another place and there is no taking that back because the other always stays with you no matter where you are and all of those half-naked people never go away any more than the scorpions scurrying about your feet in the roaring lamp or the tilting of the marsh hawk above the hot springs so far from the stultifying cubicle paper shuffle but you listen and the thoughts of music come back and haunt the primal fire like the howl of the garbage wolf and shameless hips gyrate like they should in the glow while coyotes sing about scent of prey and streams of pin lights arc across the deep black above the feathers and necklaces in the parade and you think about them and what must be going on in their stomachs and shaking asses and you stand and try the dance and find that it fits no matter where it is done because it is never really finished no matter where you are and you take off the skin arch the naked foot let your muscles grab the playa wind
Brad Garber lives and writes in Lake Oswego, Oregon. He has published poetry in Cream City Review, Alchemy, Fireweed, Uphook Press, Front Range Review, theNewerYork, Ray’s Road Review, Flowers & Vortexes, Emerge Literary Journal, Generation Press, Penduline Press, Dead Flowers, New Verse News and other quality publications. Nominee: 2013 Pushcart Prize for poem, “Where We May Be Found.”