A Poem by Ayaz Daryl Nielsen

meridian

they eat a precooked

chicken while sitting
on the grassy meridian
of a busy side street

their cardboard signs,

propped against a young
maple supported by
two thick guide wires

one sign says, ‘my ship

sank, please help,’ the other,
‘no lies, it’s for beer’

the chicken tastes so good

as they flick warm bones
at passing bicyclists clad in
purple and pink spandex

one has an eye patch and a
torn pirate flag as a cape,
the other’s belly is sunburnt
as it sags from his T-shirt

the precooked chicken -

it tastes so good -
it tastes so good to them

ayaz daryl nielsen, poet/editor/husband/father/veteran/x-roughneck (as on oil rigs)/x-hospice nurse, editor/custodian of print pub bear creek haiku (20+ years and 110+ issues), has poetry in awesome homes including Lilliput Review (ed. Don Wentworth), Barbaric Yawp (ed’s. John and Nancy Berbrich), Shemom (most favorite person ed. Peggy Dugan French), Yellow Mama (check it out online/Cindy Crosmus most exotic of editors), Lalitamba (possibly coolest print pub in existence), ayaz has three collections of poetry in print, blog site is bearcreekhaiku.blogspot.com (which translates as joie de vivre).