2nd Street Amendment
Two Poems by Hunter Keough
2nd Street Amendment
There ain’t no B.B. King.
Everyone has the right to rabbits’ feet,
to snail shells and sharks’ teeth; guns
and bullets don’t grow as naturally
as Mulberry trees
except in Memphis, where men brandish
.40s as easily as beer bottles
shatter across the unborn sidewalk; their caps
shoot off into a parking garage cathedral,
jazz onto Beale Street’s introspective rainbow
stupor of midnight blues guitars screaming.
Crying fast money / Crying fast women.
Fast like bullets. Glock’n’roll.
Memphis carries itself, all loaded
sons and daughters. The thrill is gone.
There ain’t no B.B. King.
conceptions of missing pleasure
What is a man to do but stand / beneath the spinning
mobile / the artifice of planets / dead
planets / and wonder how
he made it / this far in life?
He seizes / a trembling brush / thinner than his
ragged stubble / begins to paint
the universe / with disparate / colored motifs.
A pink moon / circles / the skulls on azure Earth;
a man’s insides / are frail, weary / bone and justified
black rings / around Saturn’s / whitewashed frame.
A man has regrets like Jupiter
is squeamish / purple tulips waving
across to oxygen / stars not
hanging / on the mobile’s dripping
paint / but within / the man’s gravitating lungs.
Heaven says nothing and
nothing / can be done / but weeping,
while the sun retains its clementine luster.
Hunter Keough is an undergraduate student at the University of Memphis. He is expected to graduate in December 2016 with a degree in Creative Writing, at which point he intends pursue an MFA in poetry. He is a recurring poet in the Tennessee Magazine.
Photo Credits: Silas A. Holmes, photographer (American, 1820–1886); Charles DeForest Fredricks, photographer (American, 1823–1894), [Broadway, looking north from Broome Street, New York], about 1853–1855, Salted paper. Courtesy of the Getty’s Open Content Program.
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