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Scott Urban

The October Editor's Pick Poet is Scott Urban

Please feel free to email Scott at: surban1874@yahoo.com

SCOTT URBAN

JUGGERNAUT

spring evening
sun already set
on my way home
my headlights
two full moons
burrowing through the night

what is that,
scattered across the road?
leaves? wind-fall acorns?
no—they’re moving, hopping
minuscule frogs
grey-green spring peepers
smaller than the last joint
of my little finger
hundreds moving en masse
hoping for greener ponds
on the other side of the road

and i would have stopped
but it was already too late
how many dozens did i take out
deciding what they were?
a croak of infant amphibians
crippled or compressed
into my radials' treads,
flattened by a behemoth
that arrives unexpectedly
and crushes without stopping
to inspect the damage

bile bubbled
at the back of my throat
i shouted and pressed
the accelerator even harder

i wondered if God, too,
sometimes felt nauseous
as He trampled us underfoot
too large to change directions
and moving too fast to offer
an apology

AFTER THE READING
(for J.J.)

Words,
which only a short time ago
had been used to construct
colonnades for poems
chanted recited sung,
now,
in the dimly-lit alley,
become sharpened missiles,
ninja shurikens,
striking between the shoulder-blades,
and someone’s palm
rests on the handle of the clasp knife
because our fingers
always seem to want
to take those words
and repay them
with the edge
of a blade.

TALES OF THE SWINE AND OTHERS

It is in vogue again:  to rush porcine-like,
rooting, bunting, shoveling, grunting,
shoving the runts against the fence to
garner more glorious garbage for one’s hoggish self.

Even an acknowledgment of such sty-like
activity does nothing to illume the Universe:
what I would cast before them, these gristle-backs,
is, from the point of view of the oyster, a nuisance and annoyance.

In a way, it bespeaks of wonders:
that such magnificent metamorphoses can occur
here—and at this time—without the aid
of a mistress mage, without a Circe’s spell.

New work from Scott H. Urban has either recently appeared in or is scheduled to appear in Burningwords, The 2 Rivers View, and Eclectica. His most recent poetry collection is God’s Will (Mad Rush Press) and his most recent anthology appearance is in Every River on Earth (Ohio University Press). His short dark fantasy is collected as Bloody Show (Pallid Mask Press) and is available as a Kindle edition at Amazon.com.

By day, he works with troubled youth. He lives with his family amid the shadowy forests of southeastern Ohio.