"Nathan Logan is the editor of Spooky Boyfriend and a MFA candidate at Minnesota State University Moorhead. His work has appeared in/is forthcoming from Literary Tonic, No Posit, The Scrambler, Sir!, and Superficial Flesh."
Spooky Boyfriend is an awesome, hip, kick-ass journal and I suggest everyone read it, memorize it, and commit revolutionary acts, citing it as the catalyst. Please enjoy the poems.
And the reading is SATURDAY! $2 CHEAP!
Florida
A cream-colored llama stares at me
from under a string
of non-blinking white Christmas lights,
so I know the neighbors are home.
That llama is only outside
when Betty and Ted go to
Dutch Delight Party House, which
is the safest swingers club in the state.
Their kids are cool with it apparently,
but they’ve got issues too. Their oldest
runs an alligator beauty contest from
the middle of the Everglades. (The
winner becomes a nice pair of boots.)
The second child haunts Daytona Beach
in the spring, tries selling vibrating condoms
and seashells to the oily, overexcited Midwestern
co-eds. As if they need the help; all kinds
of shit, palm trees, tangerines, etc., take to the air
whenever hurricanes get lonely for people.
…But it’s A Dry Heat
Conquest is a type of quest,
Tori hardly explains. We’re
both standing in the bedroom,
her hand clawed over my heart.
It doesn’t sound like a nice
kind of quest, I tell her. An
overhead fan spins, the sheets
sputter. Her little Pomeranian
sits motionless outside the door,
waiting. Waiting for what? A jeep
cruises past the window, pounding
some beats into our bloodstreams.
Palms across the street wave goodbye.
At 12:47pm on June 15th, 2004, in Gilbert,
Arizona, I get what is meant by “dry heat.”
The Grapecrushers
The grapes have grown grim.
Grapecrushers around the county
are sad. With no grapes, they
spend their daze in the beauty salon
remembering "the good 'ole days,"
whatever those were. I don't remember
any time in which grapes were happy,
danced off their vines under moonlight,
enjoyed fancy cocktails downtown. Maybe
the season has made the grapecrushers
delusional, altered their memories
so that they think that at one time,
forty years ago, they enjoyed their work
and relished any occasion to get
dirty among the rows of succulent fruit.
They're so convinced of this, I almost forget
the truth myself: there are no grapes
in Howard County. Only squash patches.
