David Spicer

TAZ

I’ve caught my share of crooks:
bank robbers, grifters, puppet masters,
loudmouth frauds. I don't hesitate
to feed my ego by bustin' their cornflake
balls even more. My favorite was a barmaid
named Tasmania who answered my questions
in the box with a pause and then,
Say what, boss?
and sometimes said,
I'd love to kiss your mustache because you
make me hotter than a horny furnace.
She gazed out to Main Street and asked,
Do you like cemeteries?
Why? I said.
Because gravestones remind me
of mushrooms, Deputy, and I wanna eat you.
Back to business, Taz. Can I call you that?
She said, Sure. Impress me.
Why'd you to try to pass
off the grape juice for wine? I asked.
Lawyer, she said.
I frowned like a famine in a desert.
Lumbered toward the door.
Hey, Penny Dreadful, she said,
tell me when my limo's here,
’cause you ain't got a blind steer's chance
in Pamplona of nailin' me with your bullshit.


Gerald So reads "Taz":



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David confesses: "I watch a lot of Investigation Discovery shows, and they rarely disappoint. I've always been fascinated by the interrogations that cops conduct and the idea of what would happen if a totally nihilistic, uncooperative suspect and a tough-guy cop ran into each other in 'the box'. And thus 'Taz' was born."

DAVID SPICER has poems in Chiron Review, Alcatraz, Gargoyle, unbroken, Raw, Rat’s Ass Review, The Ginger Collect, Easy Street, Yellow Mama, Ploughshares, Scab, The American Poetry Review, and elsewhere. He is the author of Everybody Has a Story and five chapbooks; his latest chapbook is From the Limbs of a Pear Tree, available from Flutter Press.

David Spicer

FALSE CONFESSION

Let me amuse myself and devour
your attention, since I’m under arrest
and you’ve found Clarissa,
my lichen-laced .357 Magnum
lost on Pacific Road. Care if I smoke?
I won’t slobber. You want me to sing,
I’ll sing like a chimp, though I’m not
your straw man. Reject what I say,
I don’t care. My first victim—don’t
know her name—died in a coma in Vietnam.
I tossed the next one, Eddie Merton,
into a gully after wrapping him in a hopsack
shroud, lips glued, brains splattered.
Then the hipster rat Hindu—not a Hindu,
but an acidhead. I stole his shadow,
watching him disappear into thick air.
Voyeur that I am, I loved that! Drifting
to Nebraska, land of sallow ice
and baseball snowflakes, I met
a Detroit anarchist in a meat market.
Hog-tied her with rusty chains.
Sure, I’ll have coffee. Black. My next girl,
an Omaha librarian, fought me. It took two
minutes in a wheat field to pull Clarissa's
trigger. I sniffed every inch of Omaha’s body.
Don’t believe any of this? Join the club, pigs.


Gerald So reads "False Confession"



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David confesses: "I read about Henry Lee Lucas in Vanity Fair years ago, and recently Vanity Fair Confidential aired an episode on him; I found myself writing this persona poem about a wily, evil, deceptive character who loved to yank the chains of cops whom he deemed less intelligent than he was."

DAVID SPICER has had poems in Chiron Review, Reed Magazine, North Dakota Quarterly, Prime Number, The American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, Gargoyle, Rat's Ass Review, Slim Volume, The New Verse News, Easy Street, Bad Acid Laboratories, Inc., among others, and in A Galaxy of Starfish: An Anthology of Modern Surrealism (Salo Press, 2016). He has been nominated for a Pushcart, two Best of the Nets, is the author of one full-length collection of poems and four chapbooks, and is the former editor of Raccoon, Outlaw, and Ion Books. He lives in Memphis, Tennessee.

David Spicer

YOU TELL ME

Some people need killing. You know who my object of opprobrium is: the plump-faced misogynist who moved in down the street. Besides being a misogynist, this mutt has eyes for ten-year olds, and he’s a xenophobe, a cripple-hater, a racist. This mutt could be as bad as… You tell me. This mongrel’s so vile crocodiles won’t eat him after an assassin tosses his bloated body into an Okeefenokee swamp. Am I advocating murder? You tell me. I bet you’ve thought about it. But nobody gets away with murder, you tell me. Or so we’d like to think. I could tell you how to get away with murder, but I’ve never wasted anybody, so I’m not an expert and you’d be a fool to take my advice. First of all, don’t confide in anybody. Never. Not even your spouse, not your fuck buddy after a wet night in bed, not when the twilight’s so beautiful in Flagstaff you can’t resist upchucking your secret to the person closest to you. Don’t have accomplices because at least one of them will be stupid and have a big mouth. And when you’ve finally decided to do it, for Christ’s sake wear gloves and a forensic-measured, paper kill-suit. Shave every bit of hair you have. I’m probably leaving something out. All perfect murderers do. Have you ever wanted to kill anybody? Come on, you can tell me. Has somebody raped your little girl in such a brutal way you don’t want the scumbag who did it to share the air with everybody else? Have you ever read a newspaper account of a home invader who walked away on a technicality? Oh, you tell me, I wouldn’t stoop to the level of somebody like that. Maybe not. But you know as well as I do we’re all capable of anything. Sin on the side of beauty, you advise me. You’re right, I know. Watch the sun gradually rise up from the ground in beautiful increments of bright color until you have to turn your eyes away or risk blindness. Don’t think about disgusting human beings, you tell me. You’re not perfect, you tell me. Otherwise you wouldn’t be writing this. But you’re human. Resist the urge. Hope somebody else has the balls to off this one-off, because admit it: you’re just all talk and no action, aren’t you? I imagine somebody’ll try soon, though. Then we can breathe freely again, then we can think about the future, then we can close our eyes and smell the mince pie baking in the kitchen instead of being afraid all of the time. We can be happy to be human again instead of ashamed, instead of thinking about murder, instead of thinking someone’s so despicable that he needs killing, can’t we? You tell me.


Gerald So reads "You Tell Me":



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David confesses: "I felt the present political and social climates were ripe for a piece homing in on a specific perpetrator against women and that the piece would be more effective if a misogynistic and pedophilic criminal resided in the speaker's neighborhood, making the immediacy of crime more heartfelt and intense."

DAVID SPICER has had poems in The American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, Gargoyle, Mad Swirl, Reed Magazine, Slim Volume, The New Verse News, The Laughing Dog, In Between Hangovers, Easy Street, Bad Acid Laboratories, Inc., Dead Snakes, and in the anthologies Silent Voices: Recent American Poems on Nature (Ally Press, 1978), Perfect in Their Art: Poems on Boxing From Homer to Ali (Southern Illinois University Press, 2003), and A Galaxy of Starfish: An Anthology of Modern Surrealism (Salo Press, 2016). He has been nominated for a Pushcart and a Best of the Net, and is the author of one full-length collection of poems, Everybody Has a Story (St. Luke's Press, 1987), and four chapbooks. He is also the former editor of Raccoon, Outlaw, and Ion Books. He lives in Memphis, Tennessee.

David Spicer

ON THE INTERNET

I’ve lost my humor: my false
teeth surround their tongue,
threaten to chew it next time it
flickers, stomach accepts nothing
but charcuterie, and feet demand
to amble on dunes. I guess I’ll buy
a bus or plane ticket to Key West,
where I’ll hide out with an online
sweetheart—a folk-singing nun named
Dominique—under a resort parasol.
We’ll hide out a week, swap recipes
for Long Island Teas, Miami Vices,
and Blue Hawaiians. No habits
except drinking and screwing,
so I hope my nightmare will end soon,
but a subpoena may be waiting:
my name is linked to a shipjack
because I have a rap sheet longer
than a yacht. I’d like to remain
a complete stranger to everyone
but Dominique, even though I
receive catalogues of mugs,
paintings, and buckskin jackets
illustrated with playing cards.
I might look for my twin there
and confront her about my cut
of the robbery. Maybe I’ll pour
myself a Grasshopper or tell
Dominique I’m now her manager.
Hell, on second thought my garden
needs weeding, and I can find another
crazy girlfriend on the Internet.


Gerald So reads "On the Internet":



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David confesses: "I'm fascinated how life on the lam is, how criminals perform misdeeds, embrace relationships, and enjoy good times. The Internet makes this possible by supplying a resourceful fugitive a little anonymity, but a felonious life still contains complications--however, they can be decreased by cynical humor."

DAVID SPICER has had poems in Yellow Mama, Reed Magazine, Slim Volume, The Laughing Dog, In Between Hangovers, The American Poetry Review, Easy Street, Ploughshares, Bad Acid Laboratories, Inc., Dead Snakes, and in A Galaxy of Starfish: An Anthology of Modern Surrealism (Salo Press, 2016). He has been nominated for a Pushcart, is the author of one full-length collection of poems and four chapbooks, and is the former editor of Raccoon, Outlaw, and Ion Books. He lives in Memphis, Tennessee.

David Spicer

ANY SECOND NOW

I'm no Zulu warlord, nor
a short-sleeved madman savoring
a drip of coffee in this sad diner.
I renewed my subscription
to Gunfire because the cemeteries
aren't packed tight enough.
All I need is a toothbrush
so I can flick this rot from my mouth
that hovers and proves hate sometimes
overpowers grief. Some scars
aren't ever removed. A proverb states,
If you limp, use a walking stick.
The denizens of this city think I want
to annihilate them. A certain cadence
exists in the control they wield.
They advise me to scrub and rinse the tub
without any smears appearing. It's not like
I’m a thief who’s stolen a mother of pearl
necklace—I just want a plate of shrimp—
but this place is pitiful. I arrived an hour
ago and my roll isn't here.
Don’t they recognize me by my dome?
Don’t they know I have the ticket,
that I’m an island of volcanoes
ready to boil over any second now?


Gerald So reads "Any Second Now":



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David confesses: "There are so many massacres by angry young males that I found it tantalizing to inhabit the voice of one such animal. One word fell into another until the speaker became an explosive shooter with so-called reasons on the cusp of annihilating as many people as he could."

DAVID SPICER has poems accepted by or published in such as Reed Magazine, The Curly Mind, Slim Volume, Yellow Chair Review, Jersey Devil Press, New Verse News, On the Rush, Circle Seven, Phantom Kangaroo, Bad Acid Laboratories, Inc., and elsewhere. He is also the author of one full-length collection of poems and four chapbooks, plus eight unpublished manuscripts.