Onan Ivory
︎︎︎ Alan Elyshevitz
︎ AUG 23, 2021
Onan
Ivory is a good color
for a car No one wants
the yellow It screams
like a toddler and moves
only in circles noisily
It wets the bed and looks smaller
than it actually is I want to be
dull and unpoliced I don’t want to be
magnified by a helicopter
nor stained by identity ink
I’d give anything to be Onan Ivory
with a small nose do my business
with sneakers on the street
buy a doughnut in the morning
claim a public bench
and watch the squirrels fall
for a car No one wants
the yellow It screams
like a toddler and moves
only in circles noisily
It wets the bed and looks smaller
than it actually is I want to be
dull and unpoliced I don’t want to be
magnified by a helicopter
nor stained by identity ink
I’d give anything to be Onan Ivory
with a small nose do my business
with sneakers on the street
buy a doughnut in the morning
claim a public bench
and watch the squirrels fall
Alan Elyshevitz is the author of a collection of stories, The Widows and Orphans Fund (SFA Press), and three poetry chapbooks, most recently Imaginary Planet (Cervena Barva). His poems have appeared in River Styx, Nimrod International Journal, and Water ̴ Stone Review, among many others. Winner of the James Hearst Poetry Prize from North American Review, he is also a two-time recipient of a fellowship in fiction writing from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts.