Bobbing for Apples in Eden


Much is forgiven those drunk on love,

for when they sober up and see what they’ve done to the rug,

they will repent and if not repent, at the very least, recoil,

if recoiling is still a viable option for some of us.

We have been playing musical chairs with the infirmed

and you still imagine life is fair, but I’ve checked the deck

and there’s still a few cards missing,

so cheating at solitaire will get you nowhere.

 

It seems an amputee is holding up the buffet line.

Maybe someone would be kind enough to lend him a hand

and as you can no doubt see, the blind are leading the bland

in a game of pin the tail on the donkey.

Now, could you please remove your feet from the coffee table?

There‘s no reason to seem so smug, considering

someone just did a belly-flop into the gene pool out back

and they’re bobbing for apples in Eden again and

I don’t even remember inviting them.

 

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 Jack Conway’s poems have appeared in Poetry, The Antioch Review, The Columbia Review, The Hiram Poetry Review, Rosebud, Light, Yankee, Rattle, Folger’s Shakespearean magazine and the Norton Anthology of Light Verse among others. He was nominated for a 2007 Pushcart Prize by the Poetry Midwest Journal, for his poem, “The Wound of Being Never Heals.” He teaches English at the University of Massachusetts and Bristol Community College. He is the author of six nonfiction books and one novel. His most recent book, The Cape Cod Canal: Breaking Through the Bared and Bended Arm, will be published this spring by History Press.