Tinker Less
by Mike Jurkovic

  1. I’m so prone to forgery
  2. you think I wrote this poem
  3. but I didn’t. It rolled in on a fog of sleeplessness
  4. from a room with a spurious past.
  1. But you go where the gig goes
  2. and who’s to argue
  3. our dark migrations?
  4. The bags of glass
  5. we barter for comfort?
  6. Consort? The corrosive chants
  7. that cull the herd.
  1. Wouldn’t we be less sporadic
  2. with our mercy, less prone to tinker
  3. with our own sturdy grace
  4. if only we were allies
  5. and not the other: the darker one,
  6. the poorer one. If only our concord
  7. wasn’t firearms and opiates? Addiction
  8. and perishable goods?
  1. I awoke this morning to these questions.
  2. Dressed, then came to this kingdom hall
  3. with my blueprint in need of revision.
  4. A talisman around my neck
  5. and bolt-cutters to break free.
Packingtown Review – Vol.14, Fall 2020

Mike Jurkovic is the Tuesday night host of Jazz Sanctuary on WOOC 105.3 FM (Troy, NY) and the president of Calling All Poets. He's the author Blue Fan Whirring, (Nirala Press, 2018), smitten by harpies & shiny banjo catfish (Lion Autumn Press, 2016), and Eve’s Venom (Post Traumatic Press, 2014). His work appears in anthologies Reflecting Pool: Poets & the Creative Process (Codhill Press, 2018) and Like Light: 25 Years of Poetry & Prose (Bright Hill Press, 2018).

  1. Mike Jurkovic
    Oblong Thingpoetry