this is my moral
yard stick

I have the yard stick
I need

woman hits
a man

over the head
with an umbrella

how many no’s
make a never

the laughing man
is dead his brain

resembles the
red hydrangea

divided into
two parts

ring around
the cranium

she learns to sing

***

Nathan Kemp’s forthcoming chapbook, Gnomic Verse, won the 2014 Dream Horse Press Poetry Chapbook Prize. His work appears in Columbia Poetry Review, Paper Darts, Cream City Review, and Hobart, among others. He is a contributing poetry editor for Barn Owl Review. He lives in Denver, Colorado.