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Rezoning
Don’t bother me, I’m busy rezoning
Refusing to fixate on what went wrong
Deciding instead to move ahead
I don’t particularly care for the location of my scrotum
So I’m rezoning it to my upper thigh
Just below my buttocks
Some people have been annoying me at work
So I’m rezoning them to Rochester
That produce store that lacks tangerines
Rezoned to a neighborhood where folks grow their own
My twelve year old cranky Toyota
Rezoned to my niece in college
I’m rezoning my conscience to somewhere beneath my impulses
Rezoning my ideals to the far side of my ego
Replacing them with carbs, lots of carbs
My poetry group I’m rezoning to Wallington
Where poetry has been cut from the town budget
I’ve rezoned my VCR and frozen turkey burgers to a Secaucus storage space
I’m rezoning my sperm to my intestines, my bile to my pancreas
My insulin to my tongue, my imagination to a spiral notebook
My sense of fairness to a used clothing drop box
Most of my hair has already been rezoned to various drain openings
Without my permission
Now I’m rezoning the ending of this poem to another poem
Written by a friend who has trouble with endings
I owe him a favor
But if this continues I’ll rezone him
To a bodyshop run by excess day laborers
So don’t go searching for the end of this poem
– Joe Del Priore, North Bergen
To submit your work for consideration for the Back Page, e-mail poet Christine Goodman at info@arthouseproductions.org. Each poem should be no longer than 40 lines. Please include "Back Page poem" in the subject line.
