Best American Poetry Blog

“Downsides” [by Denise Duhamel] in Martin Stannard’s One-Shot Hit Lit Mag

  

–for
Samantha Brick



Seems
I can’t go anywhere without some dude


trying
to get inside my frontal lobe.  Just once


I’d
like to go to a hotel bar without hearing,


“Nice
brain stem! Can I buy it a drink?”


Or
“Did anyone ever tell your cerebellum


it
could be a model?”  Whenever I pass


a
construction site, the hardhats


whistle
at my bouncy left and right hemispheres.


As
I scurry away, I get, “Stuck up, neocortex!”


At
work, Mr. Smith ogles my limbic system


and
the administrative assistants with small brains


ignore
me in the lunch room.  I guess it’s true—


I
flaunt my high IQ.  I can be a tease


when
it comes to anagrams and spatial reasoning.


But,
hey, don’t we all use whatever we have?


Unlike
most women, I’m actually looking forward


to
senility, so everyone will stop seeing


only
my brain and except me for who I truly am.



— Denise Duhamel

Martin Stannard put together a one-shot literary magazine the old-fashioined way though with new media distribution. He asked friends, and friends of friends, to pick one poem apiece and he posted the results here on August 1, 2013. You will find compelling work by Angela Ball, Mark Ford, Robert Hershon, Doug Lang, Sharon Mesmer, Ron Padgett, Mitch Sisskind, Lee Upton, Terence Winch, Bill Zavatsky, many others in addition to Denise Duhamel, guest editor of The Best American Poetry 2013, whose poem "Downsides" we highlight above. — DL