Poems by Glenn Hutchinson
ISBN 1-930907-61-3
40 pages, $7
Cover art by Ellen Hutchinson & M. Scott Douglass
charlotte
I live in a city
where a native is hard to find,
where one street has many names,
where many streets have only one.I live in a city
of giant bankers who turn downtown into
uptown with their thunderous steps,
Trade and Tryon surrounded by
green trees, thick air,
hilly suburbs, bloated malls,
and SUV’s.I live in a city
with a church on every corner,
poverty nestled in between,
a city of synagogues, mosques, and temples,
shelters and a soup kitchen,
hope resting on a bench
by the bus stop.I live in a city of universities,
gallery crawls, fringe theater,
quiet festivals,a place where history lost its shoes and
we’re looking for the owner,where tomorrow is barefoot too,
lurking somewhere around
the construction site,a city both old and new,
southern, but not,
dusty and shiny—the place called home
that’s always in between.
steeple lounge
off central avenue,
a new bar lives
inside an old church.years ago, the preacher left
the pulpit where
now drums, bass, guitar &
a girl with tattoos & blue streaks
in her hair sings beforea standing congregation—
a communion of rolling rocks &
newcastle on
a saturday night.cords & mixers
are in the confessional,the pool table
is in the side chapel,wine bottles lean
against the stained glass
as the bartender tosses
vodka in the air,
mixing drinks with flash.down the street,
the gas station is
a pizza place,
the old textile mill
a computer firm,everything within something else
as the blue haired singer’s
voice echoes
across the wooden walls,
the floorand falls inside us,
saturday night now a memory,sunday standing
on midnight.
the macho poems #2:
driving down south blvd.
she told me
my car is too fru-fru.imagine my surprise.
i assumed this hunk of metal
and wheels is merely transportation
from point a
to point b.she says, “it’s a little too . . .
you know . . . “do cars have genitalia?
can my car be feminine?
or masculine?
does it need an operation?
a snip here, a tuck there?
does my car need testosterone?
does my car need therapy?some workers in detroit
manufactured my car,
no, it was mexico,
and not really workers,
probably robots—yes, robots constructed
this apparatus that now
has been given gender
with her words,
borrowed from some
tv commercial.but that night,
i had a very strange dream,
i was driving down south blvd. and
reached inside the glove compartment
(which is really strange because my car has
no glove compartment) and thenthe car moaned—yes, moaned,
and then it just stopped
in the middle of traffic,
both of us stranded,
we realized there was nothing to do,but that moment,
my car and i both knew
we were in love,
stuck in the left hand turn lane,
we had each other
on this beautiful humid summer night,
we listened to the honking,
we looked up at the billboards,
we searched for the stars.
the head of billy collins is found at the neighborhood theater
I want them to water-ski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author’s name on the shore.—Billy Collins,
“Introduction to Poetry”
The head of Billy Collins
sits atop the podium
and in the first row, center,
our necks bend back,
our eyes watch the mouth openand become a slow, deliberate faucet
dripping wit down the podium,
through the bright lights, then
bouncing off the edge
of the stage, into our ears:mice, salt shakers, and a cello
riding down and becoming
Druids, knights, even God.
In the lobby, we join the line,
then an hour later, at the table,
the head has a body,
a hand shakes mine,the torso leans toward her,
“I saw you,” he smiles,
“your little reverie.”On the sidewalk, the confession,
she closed her eyes
to contemplate, she claims,
the mice, the swans, the cello.In the car, I kid her:
Billy Collins thought you were asleep!Of course, he didn’t.
She wasn’t—
this Thursday night was
an ocean in moonlight.She just left the beach,
and she’s water skiing
across the surface
of a dream.
GLENN HUTCHINSON teaches in the English department at the University of North Carolina-Charlotte. Glenn completed his doctorate at UNC Greensboro in rhetoric and composition with emphasis upon service-learning and the teaching of writing. His poems have been published in journals such as Iodine and Thrift, and Glenn has written several plays including The Dreamcatcher, brainwrap, and Robots Attack American Theater. Also, he is editor of the Tryon Times, a monthly publication of writings by residents of a men’s homeless shelter in Charlotte.