IF THIS IS TRUE, THEN WHAT ELSE IS?

                    by Trenton Pollard 

                    -for Michael 

It’s the first rule of improv.
 
If I’m mowing the lawn, then I have a lazy husband.
 
If he sticks out his belly, then I have a daughter that talks like a Californian.
 
If we eat lunch the mayonnaise is poisoned.
 
If there’s a heaven, one of us is in hell.
 
If the gods smite us, then we loved what we loved, too much.
 
If two friends sit on a bank, a crane appears in the creek in front of them.
 
If it walks in elegant strides, looking down, then it is hungry.
 
If it isn’t hungry then it’s cooling its legs.
 
If there’s a disease that begins with numbing feet, there will be a silence after a last breath.
 
It too will be break.
 
If the sun was burning your neck, I leaned back to block it with my shadow.


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photo by Patrice Aphrodite Helmar

 Originally from Michigan, Trenton Pollard has worked as a welder, political organizer, graphic designer, and massage therapist. Recent poems have been published or are forthcoming in Denver Quarterly, Memorious, Passages North, Lambda Literary, and elsewhere. He lives in Queens.