2 Poems by Jon Riccio

William Carlos Williams, His Cable Viewing Habits (a golden shovel)

Dens, they’ve changed; also
my doctoring. Satellite much?
Television after tonsillectomy depends
whether sherbet’s up. On

the channel: klieg pastors, antenna
with beatitudes of red-
party clucks, the lead-to-has-been wheel,
but there’s Spelling’s Farrah barrow.

Stay glazed.
Clamp banality with
off-vibe rain
and edgewise water.

My receptionist calls open space kryptonite beside
a doorjamb—all is contrition when stasis spurs the
ham radio megahertz besieging Dwight
in his Pocatello bungalow. The Magnavox comes with chickens.

Recruitment Drive, Camp Contortionist

We can’t promise Soleil but
here’s where the trapezius sleeps.

Deltoid as down payment,
spine clarion builds
your twit-o-phants
per elbow traipse.

Myth: you can bankrupt a toe.
Truth: the auto-swivel wrist.

I lived sacrum to lotus,
lad malleable surrounded
by randy flames—element,
not the strip-o-cop,
ankle profits like strategic
cartilage or membranes
to a marquee.

Clavicle versus tendon:
staying power takes bone
oomph bit-playing a solar
plexus, the patella’s
non-fame unbent.

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Jon Riccio is a PhD candidate at the University of Southern Mississippi's Center for Writers. Recent work appears in Bending Genres, Sheila-Na-Gig online, Wordgathering, and Word For/ Word. A 2018 Lambda Poetry Fellow, he received his MFA from the University of Arizona.