A Different Person Each Day

Sunday: a lunatic who polishes zinc
and enjoys shotgunning video avatars.
This evening by the nightstand
I interpret the Bible to survive
day two, when I lament the time
I called myself Tuffy and listened
to the Kinks. I read Barron’s
and alibi my sister Donna, who’s
accused of hanging a puppeteer.
The next morning I’m in a sickbed
from eating too many brownies
at a pizzeria, and my boombox
blares Eight Days a Week, so I drink
apple beer for Humpday’s breakfast
before tattooing Wynona on my bicep.
Twenty-two hours later, I work at my old
man’s gas station and fill up three jeeps,
one bulldozer, a mail truck, and a Silver
Cloud. Friday, I cash my check that buys
red snakeskin cowboy boots, a sterling
lighter, and a corsage of daffodils for Emma,
a colleague in the English Department,
where I lecture today—I mean tomorrow—
to dozing students who’d rather rehearse
for No Exit. The Sabbath again:
I forget who I am, but I’ll prevail,
or manage, because I’m beginning
the new week as seven separate people.

David Spicer has had poems in Chiron Review, Alcatraz, Gargoyle, Third Wednesday, Reed Magazine, Santa Clara Review, Ploughshares, The American Poetry Review, and elsewhere. The author of Everybody Has a Story and four chapbooks, he’s the former editor of raccoon, Outlaw, and Ion Books and is scheduled to have From the Limbs of a Pear Tree (Flutter Press) released in the Fall of 2017.