Per Contra Spring 2009 Light Verse Supplement
James Zerndt
Two Figures of
Speech Walk into a Bar
Simile: I’ll have, um, like a beer.
Bartender: You got it. How about your friend here?
Metaphor: I’ll have a warm hand
massaging my soul.
Bartender: I don’t think we have that.
Simile: I’m sorry. He’ll have, um, like a whiskey.
First Poetry Reading
They all do it in
the same
ca-
dence.
I discover that night
a kind of DNA to poetry-
something that makes the words climb up
and down a ladder,
their feet pausing
where the rungs twist
with irony.
Afterwards I sit in a restaurant,
pick up a menu, and give
my first reading to an audience
of silverware:
Meatballs
with Parmesan
and Egg
Plant
drenched in a hearty
red sauce
Seven
Nine-
ty
Nine.
James Zerndt’s poetry has most recently appeared in The Oregonian Newspaper and Slipstream Magazine. He was named runner-up in Playboy's 2008 college fiction contest. He lives in Portland, Oregon where he rarely speaks about himself in the third person.
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