Poetry Packet By Andrew Knox Published August 13, 2013

40 Hours A Week Monday Comes like a disagreeable jar With a lid that cuts a wide crescent across your palm. Hold your breath and wrap around it. Gasp and release. Call it a lousy bastard and give up. Try again. Tuesday Time for negotiation, a diplomatic solution, Asking whoever is around to take a riot at it. If they succeed, its because you loosened it up for them. If they fail, shuffle away, mumbling curses. Wednesday Mama says run it under hot water For a couple minutes and more, But this only greases the alligator up. Whatever you do, punch it in the nose. Thursday Bang it on the edge of the table, Flick the lid, pray away the friction. Your uncle is a physics professor. He wrote the textbook. He doesnt answer your call. Fucking time zones. Friday Wake up hungry, desperation setting in. Realization: go to the knife drawer. One surgical strike, rapid decompression, Who wants pickled green beans?

Knox / 1

The Patron Saint of Blood Sugar You hear me. I call to you in the middle of the night, From the freezer, down the hall, into your bed, Singing softly, reminding you that pint of Ben n Jerry's That cold honey that tastes like cherries and butter, Gets more frostbitten every second It's not in your mouth. Doesn't matter what flavor All variations of silky milk chocolate Ripples of caramel, chunks of chewy detritus. It's all you ever need. Just one spoonful has all the good news of 10,000 bibles and a box of Cheerios. One spoonful. Can't hurt. I'm more than just a number You think gets too high all the time. I only get high when you can't find a friend and confide in a Snickers bar instead. I know I'm no good for you, but The parts you hate about me are actually Parts of yourself: Love Handles, Hanging Flab, Your dizzy reaction when you realize You either have too much or too little of me in your life I'm as holy a ghost as you'll ever catch. So you pray to me with your insulin pen and tell me to behave Behave, take it slow. But you're the one who needs to be managed. I'm your candy, Girl, and I got you wanting me.

Knox / 2

Hillside at Hippie School At age seven I was sent away to the mines to scour for little white rocks we called quartz. We were going to strike it rich selling rocks for clocks. But contracts happened to fall through on every scheme. Then the war came. Pinecone grenades. Spiked pit traps. Slug-based bio-warfare. Enemy combatants buried alive under piles of leaves. Allegiances shifted from recess to recess, so nobody held the chain link fence at the top of the hillside for more than a day. This is what I learned in 2nd grade.

Knox / 3

Coho, Sockeye If I was then as now, I woulda probably won it. They wait to tell us not to til we already done it. Second Grade Live, recessed with steep hills and pine cones, leaves in a cyclone used to leave my mind blown. My childhood was played out, laying out ten stacks, metric towers tall til they fell, show n tell, and then snacks, sit criss cross apple sauce, made us all equal, I was bored as dry erase on the classroom easel. Couldn't keep still til they fed me a Benadryl, felt hella ill, semi-psychoactive pill, what's the deal? Got bored with that riddle, hadda fidget a little, defenestrated self, coulda been a great escape, but they caught me by my bootlace, turned me in, two-faced, dim set, suit case, twin breath... 26 feet left. Constrain the remainder while I feign a limp step. Office door, in press, tell secretary why my trouble's their business. Don't need no witness, I'm a usual suspect, preset, prone at recess to Pandora box a bees nest. Principal asks me, would I jump off a bridge if all my friends were lemmings? Irrelevant. As if my friends would jump just for the hell of it. I know if I apologize she might be wise to let me go, but all this time, I've been staring out the window at all of the things I love outside that make me sneeze. Imagine the bodies we'll bury with the leaves off the trees!

Knox / 4

What It Do It does this every other year. Bergs form in the middle, branch out and consolidate and come nearer with each successive freezing evening until it resembles a thin sheet in the shape of Australia upside down. Fools let their children run free. We don't know with certainty that it won't hold their weight but we holler threats across the lake just to be safe. Liability = Fun / Time. I fell in once, when parents weren't watching but sister was. Something pulled me in. The vibe of elastic energy reverberating through the plate and back to the origin of impact where the thrown brick left a dent. The battleship ka-sploosh or the crinkling fizzle scratched into the wake of each depth charge. Ducks in a holding pattern come in for a landing and skid their landing gear to a stop. Pools form atop rafts that break off the continent and may remain rogue for a week at best, but it will be water again before you know it.

Knox / 5