2 poems by Chad Reynolds

Autocollaboration w/ Facebook Updates

My friend’s wife likes to post about how it’s been three days
since she last worked out.
It seems like she posts this every three days.
I wrote something regretful on her wall then went to bed.

The next day I went to Pizza Hut and wondered
what the waiter had posted to her wall that morning before she left for work.

I bet it was something like
RIP Salinger
or RIP Michael
or RIP Farrah.

I think preachers should pay attention to what moves people online.
There may be a new grammar of grief.
Maybe people are just showing off.

I got a message from a person I hadn’t thought of in years.
Nobody special, nobody even worth mentioning.
I forgot to respond to his message for ten weeks.
Then I felt bad about this.

Life is not what I thought it would be.
Somehow I thought it would involve
less time on the computer
and more sex.

I heard about a teenager that became obese from too much time on the computer.
I am eating a bowl of oatmeal with dried apricots and figs
because we are out of bread.
I usually eat bread for breakfast.
I can’t believe there are still some people who boycott bread.
Emily has been baking.
She chastises me. You could prepare bread too, you know, she says.
But I can’t. I can’t make bread
when I can’t even respond to a simple message.
There are too many moving parts in this world
and I am so angry right now.



Yard Work

Why write about Yard Work
when there is yard work.
A Bartlett pear tree to plant.

When land becomes Landscape
what happens to the land?

I have never seen a painting of a worm.

This house is a home,
but so what?
At the Horizon
is only horizon.
It lights up twice a day
and is less impressive
than a lamp.

Between the beginning
and end of vision
my son sits
under our new pear tree
and eats dirt.


More found at So and So Magazine--http://www.soandso.org/#/reynolds/4549602644