EXERCISE POEMS – Chris Maday
EXERCISE POEMS – Chris Maday
EXERCISE POEMS
by Chris Maday
028
Chris Maday’s POP is the sleeper hit of our whole catalog. Every time Chris reads, the whole audience is drawn in– made more comfortable by having something to laugh at, something to puzzle over, something to linger over their heads. Because of this, I have asked him to open nearly every reading we’ve hosted, and every time a bunch of new readers are introduced to his work and copies of his book fly off the table.
EXERCISE POEMS was carefully carved out from the notebooks of poems written since POP’s publication. Giving us everything we loved about the earlier work but something more tender, more hilarious, more thought provoking, we think of it as a significant work of modern poetry and are very proud to share it with the world.
excerpts:
Tunnel of Love
I wish I was a
horse on the
great plains,
no, I wish I was
a rider, on a horse, on the great
plains. wait nevermind,
no, I wish I was a horse,
on the great plains.
no, fuck off,
fuck you, I wish
I was a ghost horse,
running, like hell,
at night, on the great plains.
Self Care
i love the DMV (such
a beautiful cross section of humanity)
sometimes i go there
and take a number and leave
before it’s
called.
Going Home
I drove slowly behind
the ambulance as
it pulled into the hospital driveway.
It was comforting,
to see an ambulance
doing exactly what an
ambulance should be doing.
Makeover
i looked through
my records and picked
out the less obscure ones.
i took them to the record
store and asked if i could
trade them in for more
obscure ones.
they said no.
