Kills Roaches Dead
when I was a young writer I used to read my work to friends and family with favorable response
now I realize they were just being nice
as even thinking about those pieces is so humiliating and degrading
I have to get wasted to forget I ever penned such imbecilic garbage
inept
isn’t the word
for the swill I churned out back then . . .
these days, I read to nobody
unless you count the apt. walls
and
the dead cockroach on my kitchen floor
whose demise had absolutely nothing
to do
with my last reading
honest,
I swear
Ben Newell is a native of Jackson, Mississippi where he works as a clerk at the Wilson Library/Millsaps College. A fiction writer for most of his adult life, he recently diverted his efforts to poetry. Ben likes cold gin and hot weather.