Steve Henn

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Unsolved Mysteries 

What’s it like to live in a neighborhood
where car noise doesn’t intrude from the edges?
Where lawnmowers don’t drone from deep
in its grass-green heart? Air conditioners
laboring in May because it gets warmer quicker
& more often in this climate-combobulated day & age.
There just aren’t as many birds as there used to be.
The internet tells us this year there’ll be a double
dose of cicadas. I remember that buzzing in the trees
when I was 9, 10, 11. How alien it sounded.
How it seemed to prove a thing I didn’t actually have
the slightest clue about, that things are happening
on this planet that just can’t be explained.

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Nature Poem

One thing I can’t get used to sitting outside
is the bugs crawling all over me.
There was a spider dangling
from the bill of my hat.
My left eye had to put it in focus
like some too-obvious cinematography.
The small, really small ants
my mom calls “sugar ants”
and the big black one crawling up
my leg is so clearly a living foreign
party on my body, parting leg hair
like it's running through the jungle
how am I supposed to get used to this?
I’ve got an open mouth cup of water,
no Coke, & so don’t expect
to attract the bees. I come out here
to read a little poetry and, if I’m lucky,
listen to wind move through trees.

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The Average American [a fragment]

The average American is sexually attracted to cheeseburgers.

The average American thinks cuddling with a cow is “woke.”

The average American only crosses the highway lane divider while drinking and driving.

The average American thinks people in beer commercials drink as much as he does.

The average American sits in a crowded movie theatre to contract COVID once a year.

The average American thinks Walt Disney wrote one of the books of the New Testament.

The average American wouldn’t relate to a poor person if their life depended on it.

Their life depends on it.

The average American doesn’t make it there every Sunday but still judges you for not
attending church.

The average American won’t admit he’d like to wear eyeliner.

The average American has this great idea to increase church attendance: use
donuts for communion.

The average American flips someone the bird 7.2 times a year.

The average American really does feel like his big truck is an extension of his soul.

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The Lord Knows Her Name

for M B

She’s that kind of activist.
She shames people for openly supporting the gays,
then gets them kicked out. Of their job, their life.
The community. Shoos ‘em outta town like pests.
Like pesky lil snowflakes. People in positions of authority,
having no backbone of their own, borrow hers.

Once I saw her walking her dog. She wore leopard print
pants. Is she sure she’s not a gay man her own self?
The local newspaper (right right red, it goes without
saying, here in the heart of the hardy heart nation),
hilariously refers to her as “concerned local mom.”
She gets “concerned local mom” quoted
every chance she gets. She loves her name
in the newspaper. Her youngest children can drink legally.

Mike Pence can’t be alone in a room with a woman who’s not his wife,
but for her, he’ll make an exception. She’s that frigid.
Zero degrees Kelvin. She believes she does this work
–this activism–on behalf of God. & the Lord Jesus,
too, it goes without saying. The Lord knows
her name, but not for the reasons she assumes.

I’m not going to print it here, at the bottom
of this poem. She’d enjoy feeling persecuted
too much. She’d make a public statement
about how even this is her cross to bear, In Jesus’ Name, Amen.

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Banner Art:
Six insects and two spiders, including a cicada adult and nymph, a butterfly and two gnats, Gouache painting, Welcome Collection

Editor’s Note: Steve’s contribution to this issue is worth 8 crab cakes.