John Bennett

Glaucoma

My glaucoma
is slowly
squeezing out
my peripheral
vision.

Soon I'll
be able
to see
what's
right in
front of me.

Hold Him for Questioning

If Maurice
Chevalier
were alive
today singing
Thank Heaven
for Little
Girls he'd
be drummed
out of
show business.

 

Who Marries a Guy Like That?

Driving out of Badger Pocket after a day of cleaning windows, the crew was talking about how much wild life must be out there hidden from view, mixed in with the cattle and corn. Then talk shifted to gun vs. bow hunters, with a consensus of respect for the bow hunter but not for the guy with a gun with a telescopic sight that allows him to kill from eighty yards out. Then someone mentioning a bumper sticker they saw that said, "If it flies, it dies" over a picture of a man aiming his rifle into the sky at a flock of geese. The crew pondered what kind of mind thinks this way, and then they began wondering what sort of woman would marry a guy like that.

A few miles down the road a new topic surfaced when someone mentioned being in line at Safeway and the woman in front of him, in response to the checker saying, "I haven't seen you in a while, where've you been?" answered, "France."

"Cool!" said the checker. "That's in Italy, isn't it?"

"There it is," I said. "That's the kind of woman marries a guy like that."

John Bennett was for many years the driving force behind Vagabond Press which operated on the run from Munich to DC to New Orleans to San Francisco and beyond.  He’s published four novels, two novellas, five short story collections and numerous books of poetry, essays and shards, a poem/story hybrid of his own invention.

He keeps slamming out the words, if anything with more ferocity than ever. As Henry Miller said so eloquently around half a century ago, “You may as well have your say, they’re going to shit on you anyway.”