Outside The Metro

 

Spent grain back

to the cows,

washed-up

high school stars

teaching at

their alma mater:

This is small-town

Americana,

not the antique-shop

definitions that

you’re used to

but the real

rusted-out kind

which can give

you tetanus if

you’re not careful,

blood on your finger

the color of

the tractor Papa

once drove,

before suburbia

suffocated everything.

 

Accidental Happiness

 

The derby girls were out in full force

on the boardwalk of the Salton Sea,

rolling past abandoned gas stations

and half-decayed resorts to their

own type of clarity, the old rink

moss-covered and guano-strewn,

and even though you’d think 

the grannies would tire 

of the fish-bone beach by now 

somehow they persist,

they all keep coming back to this 

deserted desert oasis to recall

the fleeting beauty that can come

from the gravest of mistakes.

 

KG Newman is a sports writer for The Denver Post. His first two poetry collections, While Dreaming of Diamonds in Wintertime and Selfish Never Get Their Own, are available on Amazon. The Arizona State University graduate is on Twitter @KyleNewmanDP.