New Poetry by Peter Mladinic

Ink Factory

Hanson at the ink factory all day on a line

looking at bottles of blue ink, black

and red ink, thought of a toilet bowl factory,

a doorknob factory, a sign factory,

signs such as “Get this over quick”

and “It never gets any better than this.”

He thought of a factory of wire elephants

and giraffes, and factories with everything

taken out: shelves, pallets, hydraulic lifts.

Emptiness factories: here’s emptiness:

empty boxes, empty shelves.

The wire elephants and giraffes have risen,

have been packed and sent to Siberia.

He thought of his sister-in-law Ethel

getting acquainted with Nancy at a bar,

“I make paste and put the paste in jars.

Kids in schools cut out trees, clouds,

picket fences they paste on paper.

The good cut outs get tacked

to walls.” He thought of a tack factory

and a factory for industrial slings.

James and Miss Q

I was seven, a second grade failure.

James Wilson and Miss Q

were rolling around on the floor. 

Fast, quiet, a turbulent, human brew.

James, in the back, gets up from his desk,

his head a glazed melon, hair like weeds,

puffed cheeks, puffy eyes like slits.

He pulls from his dungarees

back pocket a grimy, folded paper

he doesn’t open, crude

penciled numbers or alphabet letters.

All I know, it’s his homework.  Miss Q,

up front, says, Give me that mess.

In her blond perm, hourglass shape born

for a business suit she means business.

It happens quickly, their storm.

Light through windows falls on zigzag desk

rows. They roll on the floor in the room,

scuffle, over smudged asterisks

or Bs and Cs he’d struggled to form.

- © Peter Mladinic 2022

Peter Mladinic’s fourth book of poems, Knives on a Table is available from Better Than Starbucks Publications. An animal rights advocate, he lives in Hobbs, New Mexico, USA.