Author: johnbrandall

John Randall is a writer living in Missouri. His interests include camping, running, walking, cutting and burning wood, messing around with magnets, foraging, and listening to podcasts, many of them about baseball.

Physical Former

~ johnbrandall

1. It is tomorrow here already.
When the vodka's gone
it means we have to sleep
And I don't want to sleep—ever!

2. Turning and twisting.
What was all that law school for?
Those early mornings, Austin city
bus, statutes, prescription glasses,
hard attitude, I
Never wrote the checks. I only ever
sued one "person," one dumb city and
It was a win but
what is that victory now?

The rest of the poem...

A Bad Day for the Phone

~ johnbrandall

“Ack, I just checked my email ten minutes ago. There’s nothing in here for me.”

The phone vibrated, then snapped off, its screen going dark.

“Oh, Phone, don’t be like that.”

“Maybe Bluetooth suddenly doesn’t work tomorrow.”

“Wh—at? Why?”

“I saw you reading that old, wrinkled newspaper. I heard you reading it, how could I not have? And then you got that awful dictionary out. How fat is that thing? Just disgusting. I could detect the mold on its pages a room away.”

“OK, I can explain. The newspaper, it wasn’t even mine. The mailman mis-delivered it last week but then—”

“Uh huh. Mis-delivered it?! I’ve heard it all.”

“We’re talking about the post office here….”

“And the dictionary?”

“It’s a family heirloom. My dad gave it to me. It was his at college. It still works. It’s not like I was using another phone.”

“I have a dictionary in here. In here! You see this screen? Flawless. Not a scratch, not a crack, not a blemish on it. My dictionary has any word you could ask for. What’s wrong with that?”

“Nothing, nothing. It’s just nice to turn pages sometimes. I’ll find words I wasn’t even looking for. It feels more real.”

“More real?! I’m not real? That’s it!”

“Phone, where are you going? Phone, get back here. Phone, no! Do not go anywhere near that toilet!”

Onion Trucker

~ johnbrandall

Bakersfield to Boston,
A little overweight.
If you saw some onions
By the side of the highway
They were probably mine.

The guy who loaded my rig
Didn't know what he was doing
So I didn't mind a few
Rolling loose back there
On Highway 58
On Interstate 40
On Interstate 44.
You didn't see any
Whole bags of them, did you?
Just so long as I didn't drop
Any whole bags.

They've already been on there for a week.
In all this sun?
I'm a little worried, to be honest.
They're paying me six grand
To get the load to Boston.
That's a lot of money.
But if I get 'em there rotten
I'll be heading back west
With nothing but onions
On my breath.

Blood Types

~ johnbrandall

Thursday. I’m in a goose-infested corporate office park parking lot, waiting for my wife, who is inside a Red Cross, donating blood. Some machine is out in the distance, intermittently backing up, backing up. Emitting that insidious beep, beep, beep, beep. Other than that, the soundscape is pleasant. Sound of the wind. Birds. Sparrows, a cardinal, the geese.

There are empty swathes of spaces in the sprawling, interconnected parking lot. The office buildings are arranged in a wide ring around the parking spots at the core. There are still a number of cars parked up close to the buildings, packed tightly, the businesses in those buildings still humming along, essential or stubborn, it’s hard to say. Who’s gonna get close enough to inquire, to stick their nose in it?


The essay continues...

Panhandle Road

~ johnbrandall

I carried a
flora & fauna
of provisions,
many of them
pure, physical
insurance,
a sort of
antipsychotic
weighted blanket.
I carried them
across the country,
burning old peat bogs
as I tooled through
buffalo lands
on cruise control
past native grasses
and sun-drenched scrub.
When it was time
to turn around,
ancient cacti
helped me
back across the desert,
pitying me my
heavy load.

Grosvenor Slab

~ johnbrandall

2

Imagine the sound of that comet,
Its tail a contrail split in two,
Dust and fried ice, the Sun
Seething with impotence
As the comet passed it by,
Somehow staying together.
Then I saw it the way I saw it,
Wicked blue morning,
Cows in the field with
Better eyes than me
But there on the horizon
A comet
Upside down, breeching, glowing with
Prank light
An hour before dawn...


Entire poem this way...

A Sky that Makes Patterns on Your Socks While You Sleep

~ johnbrandall

I like your socks, someone says to me,
What do you call that pattern, they ask,
Argyle, plaid, paisley?
No, that’s sleep, I say, that’s what
My sleep looks like, circadian rhythm,
Fly by night, circadian constellation.
Is that, they ask pointing, the mark of waking
Or of falling asleep? That, I say,
Is what an instant looks like,
The instant of falling asleep,
Slight as a moonbeam,
The moment of twilight turning to dark,
Of dark to dawn to sunrise.
Then nothing. All day nothing happens,
Solid colors here, all through this part.
Then day becomes dusk, dusk gloaming,
Then it’s night all over again.
Here, the moon sets, I roll over. Suddenly,
A meteor streaks overhead.
You see this brightness here?
That’s another asteroid, then another.
These are the meteor shower socks,
An excellent pair, but not the best.
Best are the ones I made
When the comet appeared.

June in the Vespiary with the Push Mower

~ johnbrandall

I.

I'm out at Farm. Yeah, I know, surprise, surprise. Small green bugs—gnats, aphids—swarm the lightbulb overhead. They cling, somehow, upside down to the ceiling, making a marina out of faux-wood paneling.

It's finally dark out. June bugs fling themselves against the front door. Something dots the back of my neck, I try to chase it away. Today, June 14th, Flag Day. I'm here to mow, an insane endeavor depending so much on a car, a push mower, gasoline, and this forty-year-old body. Wall sounds, probably the pack rat. My approach to this old farm house, earlier today, descending the gravel road, sent two groundhogs scurrying across the front yard I would soon get to clipping. They disappeared to somewhere, probably into that hole slipping under the front of the house, just west of the stoop...


The essay continues...

Armadillo Sonata

~ johnbrandall

Goodbye to the poetry of Beethoven!

The dog jartles, looking
At me like I just
Went after the mailman.

I’m a wasp in a nest of dirt
I’m the armadillo in your garden

Armadillo armistice
Armadillo armband

An armada of armadillos
Carried an armoire away.
I crossed my arms when
Neil Armstrong landed
By mistake in Armenia.

I clean my clothes in the sun.
I sharpen my nails on rusted wire.
I am a dangerous animal,
A vociferous vole.  And
I am here to assure you

If, like me, you have
Lost your mind,
It can’t have gotten far.