This, Too, Shall Pass by Guinotte Wise

I’ll never do Everest, does Everclear count?
Oklahoma shine on a Saturday night, Jake
said it made his uncle blind, but it took
years. We worked on bridges, youth gunned
me forward, time and a half, I loved the sun
now I’m paying for that worship, precancers
excised by freezing at the dermatologist, my
joints all froze by rodeos, Mickey Mantle
said if I’da known I’d last this long, I’da
treated my body better. James Dean went
out early, they exalted the mistake made it
some sort of ex machina glorificus but it
was a redneck in a Ford who caused it all.
A bright cheery phone call, how are you
today? It’s from the skin guy’s nurse/aide
seems I have a carcinogenic blah blah and
will report to him to have a procedure blah
blah, she seems so happy about it, later I
mire the tractor in mud in the marshy back
forty, an emailer claims to have malwared
my system, wants bitcoins. I want him to
be cane whipped in the public square, but
the rasta man who calls at least has style
says I won the sweepstakes mon, got to
peh the taxes first, I say sure mon, where
do I got to send it mon this too shall pass.

Guinotte Wise writes and welds steel sculpture on a farm in Resume Speed, Kansas. His short story collection (Night Train, Cold Beer) won publication by a university press and enough money to fix the soffits. Five more books since. A 5- time Pushcart nominee, his fiction and poetry have been published in numerous literary journals including Atticus, The MacGuffin, Southern Humanities Review,  Rattle and The American Journal of Poetry. His wife has an honest job in the city and drives 100 miles a day to keep it. Some work is at http://www.wisesculpture.com