The Producer or: Milton

With the awards show winding down I can migrate
out back, patio-sit and smoke.

This poet I’m reading is harsh with the harvest.
He plucks, smatters, solemnly ambitious, his every flit
a polemic, skeletons of air and star.

But I also enjoy fresh pastures, limbs and water lilies.
The wrong number who rang during rehearsal was an old friend
camping out where the heroin is good.

If I squeeze hard enough, this wicker chair creaks
to a throne of burning gold—which sounds awesome
albeit impractical, a fumbled-for in my conjured biopic.

O how the lilies simper. My dog’s bones turn to gold
in the earth behind the shed. A tiny bushel
of frag grenades falls from off screen. It tells me
to reach blindly a while longer.

Maxwell Stenson currently lives and works in Sacramento, California. He enjoys hiking, hip-hop, walking along bodies of water, and hanging out with cats. His poetry has been nominated for Best New Poets, and has appeared in Thrush, Calaveras Station, The Blue Route, and Sijo: An International Journal of Poetry and Song.