Friday, August 29, 2014

New Poetry by Brian Beatty










The End of Trouble

Everything my teachers
committed to 
their blackboards

looked to my eyes 
like a chalk outline of a body. 

Mind you, I never saw 
anyone killed

or heard so much as a rumor 
of children
actually murdered

or disappeared 

but bully threats
and that common small town fear 

of being bored to death
I’ll never forget. 

I feel chills right now. 
To my bones. Don’t you?

Bored to death is real.

If nothing more, I learned that much 
from all those unamused
teachers  

I likewise recall 
sending me to stick my nose 
in the corner

for talking to my friends 
Mark and Chris — 

two guys who both wound up dead
before forty for reasons 
I only remember don’t matter. 
 
One in prison, one just 
fucking around.

How did I survive? you wonder.   

By hiding inside 
books where I knew 
I’d never be found.



- Brian Beatty 2014


Brian Beatty's jokes, poems and short stories have appeared in numerous print and online publications, including The Bark, Conduit, Elephant Journal, elimae, The Evergreen Review, Gulf Coast, Hobart, McSweeney's, Opium, Paper Darts, The Quarterly, Seventeen and The Sycamore Review. He sometimes performs as a storyteller.

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