Lance Nizami
33 Lines

I was born red bison calves ago
Hot coffee and three biscuits start my day
Hello Husband says a wife, then leaves
What suite of rules will I fulfill today?
Paper shreds as I watch gleefully
The eagle, chocolate-brown, ignores me, wet
The statistician passes, throwing curves
“Batter up” says codfish, as I laugh
How strange of me to punish me like that
And every day my Nature whistles me
Dan left long ago; his surname’s “Pool”

Steel projectile, rocketless, bleeds ink
The coho salmon, lips red, also leaves
It has my golf ball in its open mouth
An edge cuts at the side of green hills, graveled
Old Macdonald still farms vowels here
An elephant forgets no trumpet calls
A house of cards collapses; three are injured
Ding-dong, cloaked, will bring my package here
Unlisted, doing paperwork: a joke?
Somewhere in Nevada spheres rise up
Groomsmen scour the countryside for brides

A train horn blares for me some miles offshore
Oysters and their keepers mourn the sunset
Upstairs, floorboards creak; the Russian witch
Rancid smoke drifts down into my window
The pressure in my loins says midnight’s here
Distantly the ambulance will hiccup
The dormouse near me warms the gentle bed
In dreams I see a suited headless man
My mother died; I wonder where she’s living
Met-rolo-gists say: just a heavy day
Tomorrow squirrels chat me up from trees.

_ _

“33 Lines” was first published in the journal fourW twenty-four (Wagga Wagga, New South Wales), one of Australia's longest running annual anthologies of new poetry and prose.

Lance Nizami is an independent research scholar (science) living in Palo Alto, California. He started writing poetry during a long airplane flight in 2010, and has written much since then in-flight. His writing has appeared in journals including Palimpsest, Kerouac’s Dog, and Infinity’s Kitchen.

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ISSN 2150-6795
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