Keith Nunes
A comic of my life
I’m not a comic,
My life could be a comic but
I’m definitely not funny,
Although I tell my girlfriend I am,
She knows I’m not even tho she doesn’t say that outright
Because she’s a caring and empathetic person,
But I’m not funny,
The Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry isn’t funny either,
Anne Carson’s ‘Autobiography of Red’ is horrendously unfunny,
Poignant but it doesn’t make you laugh, at all, the once but that’s all,
Lots of people are funny, many of them are dead because they didn’t
think life was that funny, but they could be funny on cue,
However,
My parents say that I am funny at the dinner table,
When I eat, because it appeared from the outset that I seemed to
have had some sort of stroke which prevented me from getting food
into my mouth without spilling large amounts of it, on me, mostly,
and my girlfriend agrees with them that I’d adhere to the dictum of
being funny when you don’t intend to be funny, a worldwide
problem to be fair
The hat
The moiling, jolted hat
On the tiny woman, in the far background
Of the iconic painting
That’s what holds my eye
What confounds me
Its chant-like cadence
Its obtuseness
The unreasonable shape of it
The ephemeral, sacred color
Of what? Heaven?
I can’t focus on the people who want me to move on
The gallery is bustling
I don’t understand what they’re saying
Move to where?
From here?
Where there’s no hat!
The hat will not be abandoned, will not be marginalized,
It’s inconceivable that the throng don’t see its importance
The painting hangs on the hat
Not the other way round
Keith Nunes(Aotearoa/New Zealand) has had poetry, fiction, haiku and visuals published around the globe. He creates ethereal manifestations because he's inept at anything practical or useful.