A poem by Thomas Zimmerman

But who wants easy? Nothing to rub up
against. No rub, as Hamlet says. The dweeb.
Me? I prefer that haunted husband/witch,
Macbeth. That cracked vaudevillian, Lear. The pines
out back, now lightning-lit like Baudelaire’s lines,
still whisper grim absurdities, the ditch
along a path I know, which ends at Zeeb
and Jackson here, but fellow fools say, “Yup,
we know that crossroads well. It’s First and Main,
it’s Freud and Beckett. Being. Nothingness.”
I should have studied math, imagined fact
that comforts like a mother’s pulse, the stain
of milk that seeps warm through her blouse. Unless
that mother is Death, her ovaries intact.

Thomas Zimmerman teaches English, directs the Writing Center, and edits two literary magazines at Washtenaw Community College, in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

His chapbook In Stereo: Thirteen Sonnets and Some Fire Music appeared from The Camel Saloon Books on Blog in 2012.

Visit his website!