MY WARDROBE, MY ITINERARY
By John Garmon
It came upon me early in life
I felt like an unbuttoned shirt
I ripped holes in my abstractions
My memories congealed
I felt like a herd of buffalo
In a January blizzard
Crystals of ice melted in me
I ate a fried egg sandwich
Music guided my ceremony
I played the old songs
I became a medicine cabinet
I saw an octopus in Maine
I disappeared for a year
No one tried to trace me
I always told convincing lies
My love is a reclaimed
Architecture of vibration
I thought of nitric acid
My truck has massive tires
I dozed off at the pool
I moved to Montana
I got a job
I still work there
John Garmon is an 85-year-old former president of Berkeley City College, former Marine, former Uber and Lyft driver, native Texan who hasn't been there in over 30 years, novelist with 40+ books, poems in Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, Commonweal, Oddball Magazine, The Florida Review, The Oregonian, Southern Humanities Review, Radius, New Mexico Humanities Review, Oyster River Pages, Assisi, Poet Lore, South Dakota Review, and many other magazines and anthologies. He was named poet of the year by the Gwendolyn Brooks Poetry Society of Florida, in 2000, and served as the featured author/poet at the John Foix Festival in Big Stone Gap, Virginia, 1986. Ph.D. in American and British Literature from Ball State University.
