Los Angeles poet Don Kingfisher Campbell worked at Occidental College as a Creative Writing Instructor and now lives in Alhambra, California Studied at California State University, Los Angeles and is from Monterey Park, California
Poem inspired by a comment
by Don Kingfisher Campbell
HE'S
AN
ANIMAL!
.
We're lying
on the carpet
playing scrabble
.
What's this I see
poking from
his pajamas
.
A mouse
looking out
from his hole
.
Growing
into an
elephant trunk
.
Now it
sways like
a cat tail
.
And he wants me
to put that
mudpuppy in my mouth
.
I'd rather
he worm
inside my burrow
Poem inspired by experience
by Don Kingfisher Campbell
THE CHINESE WAY
.
She looks in the windows
of neighboring apartments
as we walk out of the complex
to my street parked car
.
I say, I don't do that
.
I park in the crowded lot
of the 168 supermarket
and she whispers it's embarrassing
everyone glances at a white man
.
yet she takes my hand
.
She buys fresh whole fish
and ground pork and bok choy
and two kinds of soy sauces
tells me I don't have to eat all this
.
but I love her dumplings
.
Don't use soap to wash the dishes
rinse them in leftover rice water
it's more natural than processed
chemicals and numbered additives
.
so the dishwashing liquid doesn't go down anymore
.
She asks me to brush and floss
before we can kiss and that
she will only have sex after marriage
still we end up nakedly orgasming
.
the neighbors smile widely when I pass
Poem inspired by actual events
by Don Kingfisher Campbell
SANTA BARBARA
.
The busker didn't sing to us
as we walked past him
on the wooden pier walkway
.
The waitress didn't welcome us
because I ordered crab outside
not realizing there was a dining room
.
We strolled around the perimeter
noticing the copious No Fishing signs
and many boats and birds in the water
.
People in bathing suits frolicked
on both sides of the shore
never glancing our way
.
Yet we enjoyed asking a stranger
to take a picture of us
with my cell phone camera
.
We held hands and kissed
as tires thumped and rolled
on wood planks then asphalt
.
It was a long pleasant stroll
on State Street she looked at dresses
and I offered to buy her one
.
But she said she preferred Ross
so I drove us back to Alhambra
and we shopped and found only
.
A shirt for me I told her I had
many like it at the apartment where
I brought out black plastic trash bags
.
Of unwashed wrinkled old life clothes
she chose the ones she liked and
the next day I washed them
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