Two Mouths
The list and the refrain
in Limerick, Maine
is as good a way
as any
to begin a poem.
Courting difficulty for difficulty’s sake
is frowned upon.
Oh what a world
and you in that rotten dress.
It was Bar Harbor, actually
where you walked away,
giving a list of reasons
none which I can remember now.
That’s the presence of absence, I guess.
That’s the year we roamed
with angels and black-capped
chickadees, Schwartz’s heavy bear,
country doctors, games of pool,
bars with puddles of piss
like melted ice sheets
in old ports from Bath to Belfast,
all the corridors
of the heart had me wiping
my nose, saying
no good will come of this.
All the gossip disguised as literature.
Jason so nobly mad
that you left me for Richard.
Me in my heroic phase.
Richard the turncoat, off on a lark
courting difficulty for difficulty’s sake.
“I could marry her,” he says.
And between the two
my hands
don’t come up with an answer.
Damon Hubbs is the poetry editor at Blood+Honey and The Argyle Magazine. He’s the author of the full-length collection Venus at the Arms Fair (Alien Buddha Press, 2024). Recent publications include The Gorko Gazette, Horror Sleaze Trash, Synchronized Chaos, Hobart, Utriculi, and others. His next book, Bullet Pudding, is forthcoming from Roadside Press in 2026.
