Ed Plunkett is from Columbus, Ohio. He has represented Writers' Block Poetry at the Individual World Poetry Slam in Berkeley in 2009 and has been a featured reader at the Columbus Arts Festival as well as other venues in Central Ohio. His goal is to read in all of Ohio's 88 counties. He has a long way to go.

Two Poems (March 20, 2011. Issue 26. The SLAM & FLASH Issue!)

Gaythiest

This Star is Born poster clashes with the rest of the interior design.
Rainbows have not once matched any of the mailboxes I have owned.
I don’t wave any flag.
Samantha, Charlotte, Miranda and Carrie are the four horse faced women of the apocalypse.
It's Raining Men is a minstrel show for drag queens.
I have never worn glitter or ruby slippers.
Mascara gives me the shits.
I buck trends the way I throw men out of my bed,
but I like it
That is how I live and to Hell with anyone who tells me it is wrong, or unnatural.
Send me a man with a John Singer Sargent neckline,
the shoulders of a Bellows fighter and the legs of a Degas etching.
We'll parade our Pomeranian down High Street with his leash of broken glass and collar of razors.
We'll talk to each other in disbelief.
Lining our garden walk in a coating of smashed up show tunes records we used for skeet shooting.
Oklahoma was one fat grouse.
We hit the disc two of Cats head on before calling it an afternoon.
At the end of the day we would rest in our greenhouse of orchids and Venus fly traps.
Do not tell me I cannot love.
Do not tell me I cannot dream, or deny.
It's how I stay level in a world that is not equal.

David's Rock

I can tell you his hands were trembling
as he took me from the stream

It took a long time to get to that moment.
I was formed by heat, cooling, then more heat.
Toned by earthquakes, asteroid strikes
I was made by ancient oceans,
blown into shape by erosion
Put into place by infrequent rain and sandstorms
I was not forged by the fire of a kiln or foundry,
but by nature.
He could have chosen any of us

I felt the sole of his sandal first.
Rolled south with a touch of his damp big toe.
His fingertips pressed into me.
I was solid, his choice.
I did not know I would be a weapon.

His hand was sweating so much,
salt crusted on my surface.
Placed in a cradle of leather
I felt myself spinning, spinning
until I was released into the wind, the scorching air.
Then found myself pressing into thick hair, a layer of skin
and struck bone with a fatal crack

Ascending, I watched my target fall to the ground
well before I did.
It's blood dotted a small part of me
I landed in the brush and have remained here
for millennia -
watching fighter planes, satellites and history fly over this valley
they call Elah
No one knows my story
I did not know he would be King