SHRUG
by Nate Pritts
ISBN 13: 978-1-59948-118-0
Poetry Chapbook, ~40 pages, $10***This title was selected for publication after finishing as a finalist in the 2007 MSR Chapbook Contest. ***
About the Author / Sample
Nate Pritts was born in Syracuse, NY, in 1974. He has his MFA in poetry from Warren Wilson College and his Ph.D. in Creative Writing and British Romanticism from the University of Louisiana, Lafayette. His first book was Sensational Spectacular published by BlazeVOX in 2007; his second book, Honorary Astronaut, is forthcoming from Ghost Road Press in 2008. His work has appeared in numerous journals, both print and online. He is the editor of the online journal H_NGM_N. He lives with his family in Natchitoches, Louisiana. He works in advertising.
Anything but That
What else can you expect, living in this
bungled up firmament, the seraphic I-don't-know
uncorked & flowing over? So simple, the soul
sloughed someday off; so angular, the protracted desireof what-could-be. Logic says there's something
comes after what is, that if it's this way first,
it's that way next. So you start out saying one thing
& end up saying something else & anywayit's February; we should pretend it's cold.
My neglected heart grins like a loon returned from the south
while my overdrive brain downshifts & believes
whatever happens to you just happens to you.Rhyme & reason have become unfashionable. Certainty
confounds us but let me tell you, the alternative's not so pretty either.
Someone said nothing is whole, that one plus one is still one
& do unto others but I just don't know. The tests sayI can't handle complex systems. Imagine if this were all one big
celestial accident. The senselessness piles up
& with time the mass becomes hot enough to shine. So simple,
the shine, & so beautiful. Its beauty may put you in shock.
No Superman
Sometimes what comes hurtling towards us
aren't bullets or trains, nothing
we can hope to outrun or ever be stronger than.A lesser man's kryptonite
might be just the lipstick half moon
on her coffee cup, the obvious thirstno man on her planet
could quench. Sure, I'm no Superman
but it didn't take x-ray vision to seewhat she wanted inside. So while
Superman refused all his temptations heroically,
I left the earthbound bagel shopwith my outerspace princess & headed to her place,
a quick note on Lois' counter to explain
about my planet blowing up & that I needed to leave.
LAX to O'Hare
Broke, I can't afford the headphones
that seem to be everyone else's ticket
to laughter & communal mirth,the finer points & themes of the in-flight movie
revealed only to them as we pass
over the Grand Canyon to the left,
as we hit some turbulence over Missouri.But who am I kidding?
Even if I'd had the five bucks
I wouldn't have spent it. I love to exist apart
from the crowd, in my own separate bubbleof pressurized air & holy scorn.
I can already tell you how this movie ends:
the main character, who relies more on humor
than looks, wins the girl over & kisses her &there's a final crane shot lifting us
above the newly happy couple, blurring
the particulars so that their storybecomes ours, the surrounding houses
reduced to boxes & cubes, dice
not even worth rolling. We won't see the sequel:
after they marry, the strains of money& idealized notions about love separate
them-she finds another man & he,
whose humor is no good in situations like these,
flies in inarticulate fury across the countryto distract himself from the fact
that we're all going down fast
& not even metal skin will save us.