Bummer
“Hey, Dad—you got a cigarette?”
I’d ask when young and broke.
“Don’t worry about me, my pet!”
He’d say (and have a smoke).
Water Pressure
My neighbor can’t water his lawn when I shower,
And I cannot bathe when he sprays.
When he gets a yen to start soaking his flowers,
My armpits might smell bad for days.
I’ve gone to the Mayor, but this is the South;
The workmen would rather not sweat.
They’re deaf to complaints from a feminine mouth,
And no one’s been bribed for it yet.
One time I was coated in soap like a lamb
In ringlets of wooly white hair
When all of a sudden the water, goddamn,
Cut off with me sudsy and bare.
I threw on a towel, I ran out the door—
Let’s hope that it covered my crotch.
I meant to ask nicely for five minutes more
But set off our Neighborhood Watch.
Turbulence
Clouds are pretty, up above,
But shitty in the middle of.
Julie Kane’s most recent book is Paper Bullets (White Violet Press, 2014). Her light verse has appeared in Light, Lighten Up Online, Poemeleon, Prairie Schooner, So It Goes: The Journal of the Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library, and Southern Women’s Review, among other journals. The 2011-2013 Louisiana Poet Laureate, she teaches at Northwestern State University in Natchitoches, Louisiana.