These Are Not My Words

October 31, 2024

These Are Not My Words

THESE ARE NOT MY WORDS

(I JUST WROTE THEM)

Donovan Hufnagle

GENRE: Poetry

BLURB:

Echoing Chuck Palahniuk’s statement. “Nothing of me is original. I am the combined effort of everyone I’ve ever known,” this collection explores identity. These poems drift down rivers of old, using histories private and public and visit people that I love and loathe. Through heroes and villains, music and cartoons, literature and comics, science and wonder, and shadow and light, each poem canals the various channels of self and invention. As in the poem, “Credentials,” “I am a collage of memories and unicorn stickers…[by] those that have witnessed and been witnessed.”

Enjoy an Excerpt:

Zombies

If they could...

if we would
press a voltage meter to their temple, on
through to their rotten-goo-
brain and if it registered,
if it charged,
if those neurons
ramblin in still sparked,
still signaled amongst the village
of others, I think
zombies would
wish for love,
to love, flesh and bone
again, to feel and pulse
again, to imagine
a voice kissing the back of their neck,
hairs stand at attention, polka dots
spring out, up and down their arms
and legs.

After all, they were human
once.

If they could
mold pottery and poetry,
harvest apples and stomp out grapes.

If they could
graft theory from rose stems—
born yellow and purple petals from one bud.

if they could
carve a rib from Adam,
melt steel into sword and create new.

If they could
wield Eve from Adam
and create new on the verge of war
between objects of both sexes
between objects of all sexes,
divided like branches, each branch
new, each bearing fruit dissimilar to
the other—new
If they could,
would we?

After all, we were human
once.

[When I Ain’t Got That I Do Anything] or Frenchman

Drawing noisily at a curved, worn pipe,
he sat in the backyard under an apple tree—
I ain't educated but I can write.

I was a carpenter in Iberville, the east side.
I'm on WPA now. On the brush team.
He says, drawing noisily at a curved, worn pipe,

I learned polishing from an old type,
Italian, I believe. I watched him run the machine.
I ain’t educated but I can write.

The first time I tried it, the wheel cried,
running all over the dam stone, free. You see,
drawing noisily at a curved, worn pipe,

I spoiled it. I was fooled. I thought I’d try
and there was nothing to it. But the key
is being educated. At least I can write.

You can't sell granite with a wrinkled tide
in it. But for $2.80 a day, I’ll probably flee
And though I ain’t educated, I can write,
He repeats, drawing noisily at a curved, worn pipe.

Grandma, If Only These Walls…

Do you sleep naked beneath
a popcorn sky riddled with residue
of the past and clues to asbestos?
I remember

when I clawed the ceiling,
the putty knife scraped away
the yellowing kernels and it snowed
for the rest of the day. For the rest
of my life.

They popped. And from the ceiling,
down, eventually,
yellow falls asleep on the bed.
I am a child in a snow globe,
making snow angels the same
yellowish tint as her nubs, her alley-cat
eyes, these walls.

I know little of her:
her modeling days—her costume
jewelry displays throughout
the house, but where did she wear this
ruby ring? When did this
emerald rest around her neck?
An albatross?

I imagine her strut
on the runway, such
power. They stare at her, wait
for her everything. A look. A twist.
A wink. Was she always on
display?

Did the flash of cameras blind her
marriage—rumors of others,
into another?

How the hell could she let
the next in? He stole her
money, molested her
children and grands. He smoldered her
like the tip of her cigarette,
And from the tip, down,
eventually, the ash snow fell
gray to yellow.

About the Author:

Donovan Hufnagle is a husband, a father of three, and a professor of English and Humanities. He moved from Southern California to Prescott, Arizona to Fort Worth, Texas. He has five poetry collections: These Are Not My Words (I Just Wrote Them), Raw Flesh Flash: The Incomplete, Unfinished Documenting Of, The Sunshine Special, Shoebox, and 30 Days of 19. Other recent writings have appeared in Tempered Runes Press, Solum Literary Press, Poetry Box, Beyond Words, Wingless Dreamer, Subprimal Poetry Art, Americana Popular Culture Magazine, Shufpoetry, Kitty Litter Press, Carbon Culture, Amarillo Bay, Borderlands, Tattoo Highway, The New York Quarterly, Rougarou, and others.

Website: http://www.donovanhufnagle.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/donovanhufnagle
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/dhufnaglepoetry

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/These-Are-Not-My-Words/dp/B0DBMN46M4/ref=sr_1_1

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