Brian BEATTY

---

Omahaha


It's okay to laugh at
the biggest city in Nebraska.

But first, be sure you have a way home.




Donkey Basketball


Amish children fill the bleachers.

They're waiting to see what
passes these days
for education (and, some say, entertainment)—

waiting in an unholy silence
their parent didn't invent, though
that doesn't make it

any less true. You read about such obligations.
I did once, anyway,

in a book
I'd hoped might have some dirty passages.

It didn't, of course.

But now I'm not falling
for volunteer firemen who dwarf their mules.

Or fooled by a moon
that's always orange somewhere—
and dim somewhere else.




A Soap Bubble


I was just another fat kid in a small box.

The cheating bastards with wheels
couldn't stop
laughing at my old man's

cigarette wheeze.
Until he accidentally coughed up God.

That shut their yaps.
Their asshole dads took notice, too.

Then it all went back to normal, I swear—
except now I had my bearings:

1.) Nothing really changes.

2.) Things go downhill because of Cub Scouts.






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