"World Lit." A Poem by Raymond Pert

When this poem was published, the editor asked if I wanted the period after "Lit." I said I did. The title is short for World Literature, a course that often includes Flaubert's Madame Bovary. Only later did I realize that she wondered if I meant "lit", a form of the word "light".

Yes. It's both.

A future post will feature my reading of the poem. I'm having some troubles getting my podcast over here. You can leave here and go to the podcast, though.

World Lit.

Last night

Nick drove Tiffany and Brittany

To their mom’s house

After the school harvest pageant

Ran an hour over

And Cyndy wanted to talk about why they were late

And child support

And whose turn it was to pay for

Tif’s croup pills - -

And then Cyndy went on and on

About Nick going to junior college

About how bad the battery was

In the Capri

And how she’d drove to Home Depot

To use a coupon to buy those cute Kermit the Frog

Shower rings

And the Capri wouldn’t start

And why had he let the Triple A coverage go

And if it weren’t for this nice guy in the parking lot

She’d still be there

Trying to get that goddamn motor to turn over

And she started to start in on why he took the girls to Taco Bell again

When Nick tried to explain

That he’d just cleaned the corrosion off the battery contacts

But that he’d told her when they were married

That a Capri built in ‘78’s a shit rig

And hadn’t she said that she was gonna pay the Triple A

Because he covered the last dentist bill for Britt

And he’d talk with her later because he had to get to the cedar shake mill

For graveyard shift.

This morning

Shift in,

Eyes red,

Yanks cap pulled low,

Nick sits

Waiting for the bus

Chewing Skoal Classic,

reading Madame Bovary.