Matt Hohner: Where Are You Sending Your Poems This Week?

answering a Tweet by Tara Skurtu

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I’m sending my poems to reform school. 

To prison. To the front lines. Straight to hell 

on a one-way ticket. To the Safeway for milk, 

eggs, bread, toilet paper. To the liquor store. 

To church to pray themselves out of damnation. 

To the floor of congress with a list of grievances 

and the dreams of a half-million Americans who will 

die of Covid-19. To Mar-a-Lago with a list of demands 

and a box full of infected bats from China. To bed

without any supper. To Mars with shiny things 

to leave behind and eviction notices for anyone 

who lives there. To the kitchen for another beer. 

Outside into the yard to let the stink blow off ‘em. 

To their grandmother’s house to live for a while 

because I can’t handle them anymore. To appear 

in front of a tribunal in The Hague for word crimes. 

Back to the manufacturer—they’re defective. To 

the landfill. To the electric chair for being brown 

and hungry. To the boardroom for being white 

and privileged. Down the tubes. Over the moon. 

Under the radar. Out of the park. I’m sending my 

poems packing. I’m corking my poems into a thousand 

empty wine bottles, tossing them out into the roiling sea 

as the tide begins to recede, standing on the sands 

of loneliness and waving goodbye to my feelings 

and ideas, praying they’ll wash up on friendly shores.

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Matt Hohner is the author of Thresholds and Other Poems (Apprentice House, 2018). He lives in Baltimore, Maryland.

Copyright 2021 Matt Hohner