Jeffrey Perkins
The Way Things Are Now
Find us in the crooked trees
above the wide river. A horse,
a wolf, a lion without kids.
Forget what you once knew.
We’re nothing but charades
with new mouths.
We destroy what we touch
dancing on tiny stages, falling
into crowds coming down.
We live to kill futures. Call us
mad, call us for a good time.
We all need a big night out.
Like what you see? Leave a big
tip with your shot. Everything
has a price now. You made it too—
the decision to sell your name,
your time—whatever you could
manage—to the hungry man.
Jeffrey Perkins received his MFA from Bennington College and his poems have been published in Memorious, The Massachusetts Review, The Southampton Review, The Cortland Review, Mid-American Review, and The Adroit Journal, among other journals. His first book of poems, Kingdom, was released in April 2020 from Spork Press. He was a 2019 Artist-in-Residence at the Watermill Center and lives in Los Angeles. You can find more of his writing online at https://thekingdompoems.com/
