Lying in a Hammock with James Wright

by Tom C. Hunley

Obviously I have wasted my life
chasing inspiration rather than dollars,
and as any rugged man could guess,
I hold my copy of Above the River
in soft, effeminate hands.

Our Father who art in Heaven
let me hear his angels sing into
the distances of a long-ago afternoon,
and since then I haven’t cared
about anything but re-creating that tune
or starving in moth-eaten garb trying to,

a ridiculous hammerless Noah
building an ark out of words in a world
that doesn’t believe in words or the coming apocalypse.

Listen to the cowbells, I say,
and everyone thinks it’s a Christopher Walken reference.
They say poetry is horseshit, and I say yes,
but lit up by lightning so it blazes like gold.

Tom C. Hunley has published poems in journals with names beginning with every letter in the alphabet, including Paddlefish, Parabola, The Penn Review, Perspectives: A Journal of Reformed Thought, Phi Kappa Phi Forum, Pine Hills Review, The Pinch, Ping Pong, Pittsburgh Poetry Journal, Poems & Plays, Poetry Around’s 3-D Poetry Broadside, Poetry Depth Quarterly, Poemeleon, Poetry East, Portland Review, Poultry: A Magazine of Voice, and Printed Matter (Tokyo).