Recenter Press
  • About
  • Books
    • Rest of US by Richard Hamilton
    • evening primroses by Emma Loomis-Amrhein
    • Profit | Prophet by Patrick Blagrave
    • To Hold Your Moss-Covered Heart by Schuyler Peck
    • The Good House & The Bad House by Doe Parker
    • The Road Is Long & Beautiful by Terra Oliveira
    • And Still To Sleep by Terra Oliveira
    • An Old Blue Light by Terra Oliveira
    • Processes: A Meditation by Terra Oliveira
  • Journal
    • Issue Four: Fall 2020
    • Issue Three: Spring 2020
    • Issue Two: Fall 2019
    • Issue One: Spring 2019
  • Interviews

Primal Scene

BY JOSEPH RATHGEBER.


When the delivery arrives on Sunday. An Amazon
employee     in an unmarked Enterprise rent-a-van 
scans a bar code on the cardboard box.     When

my cellphone buzzes     (or doesn’t)     in the wee hours, 
and I wake         to read the text. When my urine 
sample shows heavy metals.     When a student

sends me the pink slime video on YouTube. When
my father says the union will die when he retires.
When I tell the shrink        I’m okay

with cleaning ladies stealing jewels, carjackings, 
and cop killers.     When healing crystals and
New Age music went on-sale in the Brooklyn boutique.

When Everybody’s working for the weekend became
    an anthem. When the week was invented.
When homeless Jozef sits in the library squirting

grape jelly from a squeeze bottle into his shuddering 
mouth. When he’s wearing     a FALL RISK bracelet.

When the kids are stimming         and nobody
knows why. When parlor tricks pass for poetry.
    When the newscaster went ahead and added

a d to Columbine and made it a verb.         When 
I put brand names and other     irksome     proper 
nouns            in the poem. 
​
When the Terms and Conditions     dialog
box is clicked,        OK’d, and the NO TRESPASSING
sign made of cheap tin is obeyed.     When the banana

went              extinct. When the factory installed
suicide nets. When Black Friday arrived with a casualty
count. When KKK autocorrects as lol         on 

the iPhone. When the Word of the Year is post-truth,
is surreal. When     you     correct my grammar.

Joseph Rathgeber is an author and poet from New Jersey. His novel is Mixedbloods (Fomite, 2019). His story collection is The Abridged Autobiography of Yousef R. and Other Stories (ELJ Publications, 2014). His work of hybrid poetry is MJ (Another New Calligraphy, 2015). He is the recipient of a 2014 New Jersey State Council on the Arts Fellowship (Poetry) and a 2016 National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship (Prose). You can find more of his work at  www.josephrathgeber.tumblr.com.
  • About
  • Books
    • Rest of US by Richard Hamilton
    • evening primroses by Emma Loomis-Amrhein
    • Profit | Prophet by Patrick Blagrave
    • To Hold Your Moss-Covered Heart by Schuyler Peck
    • The Good House & The Bad House by Doe Parker
    • The Road Is Long & Beautiful by Terra Oliveira
    • And Still To Sleep by Terra Oliveira
    • An Old Blue Light by Terra Oliveira
    • Processes: A Meditation by Terra Oliveira
  • Journal
    • Issue Four: Fall 2020
    • Issue Three: Spring 2020
    • Issue Two: Fall 2019
    • Issue One: Spring 2019
  • Interviews