Jingle on the Boardwalk

Americans want their poetry to kiss

them on the mouth in public

and hang on them through their day

or forget it. So bus loads

of rhyme schemers throw themselves

at pedestrians at every stop.

The attention drives bystanders

and fawners to cheap hotels

where the Homer kings memorize

the spray of words around ballparks.

When a week at "top ten" shakes

a pant leg free of humming,

the fans strike out to revise the play,

and the Coca-Cola crowd

turns on the pouts for the new gush

from pucker prosody rushing

to their sides. There is never mind

for the choirs lodged in bookcases.

Even though engaged at rendezvous

behind closed curtains, intuition

and language perform the orgasms

of several lifetimes. Should magnets

working their magic on prefab

nostalgia generate the pursuits

of intimacy, a subtle song travels

from ancient feet through hearts

to first breath in the world.

Rich Murphy is director of writing programs at Emmanuel College where he teaches writing and literature. His poems have appeared in numerous national periodicals and recent issues of Memorious, Entelechy: Mind and Culture, Poems Niederngasse (featured poet), Inertia Magazine, and King Log. Poems will also be published in upcoming issues of New Delta Review, Vermont Literary Review, Red China, Talking River Review, Confrontation Magazine, and Chaminade Review. His Essay “Vanishing Artist” will be published in the next issue of Fulcrum and later in the International Journal of the Humanities.