one cool spring morning a man at a streetcar stop
was cutting his hair off with a chef’s knife
a fellow commuter found this disturbing
called the police an officer was dispatched
by the time he got there the man had left
the officer interviewed witnesses wrote out his report
which was picked up by the anonymous columnist
who writes the weekly summary of police incidents
in the town paper this columnist has a dry concise wit
a brilliant sense of the absurd I look forward
to the column every week and this morning
in addition to the self-barbering incident
I learned about a fox running around
on a daycare center playground and a man
who tried to steal vanilla extract and maple syrup
from an upscale grocery store and on this same morning
a long-awaited report was released
to the public and I learned that the president
had leaned back in his chair and said
I’m fucked when he first learned
his campaign was under investigation
I wondered if the self-barber and the would-be thief
were one and the same had he been planning
to make waffles to celebrate his new haircut
but was short a couple of ingredients I have heard
the president spends an hour or so each morning
preening his combover into that distinctive
orange helmet shape and I bet
he likes waffles too I wonder now
if a daycare center is a metaphorical
henhouse I wonder about the capitol
all that fertile swampland simmering
and how does one carry on
hounding after a fox
–
Robbie Gamble’s poems have appeared in Scoundrel Time, Solstice, RHINO, Pangyrus, and Poet Lore. He was the winner of the 2017 Carve Poetry prize and has received nominations for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. He works as a nurse practitioner caring for homeless people in Boston, Massachusetts.