“Make Money by Making a Difference” by Miles Waggener

Make Money By Making a Difference

My cracked phone still lets me drive and binge watch my man
Beat his opponent until he’s pulled off like a dog.
My auctioned Crown Vic, still painted like a cop, burns
Oil as it drives me between plasma and call center.
Come on old phone, commit the sins bad towns grant
Us, lick my plate clean at one international
House of pancake after pancake.  Okay stop laughing.
A bird’s nest fell out from the big red O of OCTA
PHARMA, its debris of Easter grass and fiber
Optics also had a glowing strand of blonde hair.
I just might stair at the wreckage of the ruined cage
Fighter’s face long enough for cars to honk at me.
Stop crying and drive, think spiderling silk, dispersal
Of spinnerets, tiny spiders in a blue sky, hold
Out hope the slightest of breezes will disperse me.

Miles Waggener

Miles Waggener is the author of Phoenix Suites (The Word Works, 2003), winner of the Washington Prize, Sky Harbor (Pinyon Publishing, 2011), Desert Center (Stephen F. Austin State University Press, 2016), Arterial Roads (Open Country Press, 2017), and Superstition Freeway (forthcoming from The Word Works). Recent poems appear in The North American Review, Antioch Review, Numéro Cinq, and Bridge Eight.

Photo Credit: Staff