“Milton.”
Ghost from La Jolla
Luzon, the Philippines
you wake up at the foot of the san pablo bay standing in the break with a corn cob in your chops and you puff and out pops a ring so you pull out a tennis ball from one of your big clown pockets and wedge it snug up into it and you say hey look a baby saturn but you're all alone
— ASAP HOBSTER (@KevinHobster) May 14, 2019
“How many of these hurlers — how many of them throw spitballs anymore?” asked Pal.
“Five,” said the clown with no shoes.
Mid-Atlantic
“With butter,” said Pal.
Whitney
“‘Art is what you can get away with,’” said the clown with one ear.
“What?” asked Pal.
Flag
“New Kevin Hobster flag here,” said Pal. “Who gives a damn, honestly? It’s so stupid.”
“He told me what it means,” said the clown with the tattoo on his face.
“What?” said Pal.
“It stands for stuff — you know, symbols.”
“Who gives a shit?”
“The plus symbolizes the fact that it’s there and no one knows why — it might stand for something but we’ll never know, and no one ever will. It just is.”
“You gotta be kidding me.”
“And the clover is for the fact that he said he’s half-Irish? And it’s red, the same red that’s on the Polish flag. And he has a blue eye there too, and the blue is the same blue the Italian soccer team wears, and the initials and let’s see … “
“The yellow is the same yellow as the flag of New Jersey.”
“Good, good.”
2018
“This one is um … more recent,” said Pal. “From Kevin Hobster.”
“Kid doesn’t get it.”
Lubber
“Pal wants you to come into his strawberry icing palace.”
“He’s calling every one who smiles at him a lubber, and what else is there?”
“He’s on Twitter now.”
GO TO HOBSTER
Hounds
when you draped that houndstooth bikini on
the shower curtain rod, and I found it
wet with salt, I thought of our god, the sun.
I slid it over as I entered the
pressed splash that sprays so strongly and so taut;
pink and blue and clear and red and I feel,
and maybe you feel this way too perhaps,
upon a lay beside the summer surf —
like this warm flash light that needs batteries,
and that fluff from the towel clumsily
romances your spine, and the gleam off your
silhouette you slink steady like a robe
made of halo that is banana-spanked,
inhaled, exhaled, tasted, tasteless, toxic
and thin.
Mumbo
“Cised,” said Pal.
“What?” said the clown with no name.
“You’re goodie.”