Three Poems

by KG Newman

Certain Subject Matter

I’ve made a habit of walking around town
with a cardboard box over my head,
two roughly cut eyeholes and
ventilation pokes at the nose and mouth.

Even in my more normal phases,
like on the couch for football Sundays,
the beer flows as carriers cut through holes
and evade the next-level linebacker,
jukes and spins resembling
my daily mental monitor—

Emails need responding, I bookmark
them for later. I still can’t sign
the papers. Speedy runs even as
the skyline never changes, certain
broken windows still there,
taking their time to blend.

Various One-Way Streets

Just beyond the ostentatious French fry tower
and a skip from the median where a mom panhandles
as her two kids play in a tent—sleek SUVs blurring by
into central downtown before the food trucks arrive
at Civic Center Park—city workers boot homeless
from their sleeping bags beneath the colonnade
and drive carts around stabbing at waste, beer can here
and shoe there, because what financial analyst
wants to pay 15 dollars for a gyro if he has to step
over a shit-stained body to do it?

My Son’s Lions

He keeps them on a shelf as long and slender
as a clocktower hand—
the minute, not the hour—
all stuffed, plastic and reglued ceramic sorts
that’ll soon be binders of baseball cards
of the early ‘90s variety, hoarding Ken Griffey Juniors
as I did my father’s George Bretts.
I normally dealt them in my most authentic Majestics,
on suburb blocks far and wide.
What a great trade, my father used to say to introduce
long-lasting summer evenings, watching the game
and hoping the housing market didn’t collapse.

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KG Newman is a sports writer for The Denver Post. His first two poetry collections, While Dreaming of Diamonds in Wintertime and Selfish Never Get Their Own, are available on Amazon. He is on Twitter @KyleNewmanDP.