Botched Heroics

Clisbee’s work addresses the child in us and the adult who struggles with that child on a daily basis. These poems—often humorous, sometimes sad—are always rich in humanity.

About the Author:

Clisbee is finishing his MFA in poetry at Minnesota State University, Mankato, where he was the 2008-09 Andreas Graduate Assistant. His poems have appeared in Blue Earth Review and Ninth Letter.

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Sample from Botched Heroics:

Desired

This emotion, in past tense, trumps
all others like a wild card
at the poker table of human longing. No one
abstains. This is why toddlers
turn their mothers’ heads away from
talking to someone else at parties,
why men act jokey in tough dude clothes
at bars, why women put on mascara,
bright colored shirts, and pretend
honest interest in the boring conversations
of jokey dudes dolled up in outfits
designed to mask vulnerability. Love
begins when two recognize a familiar
brokenness. Ancient Greeks
thought that, before we were born,
people contained two of everything,
which makes for a nightmare-like image
of a critter flailing around with two
heads and four arms, but the more
I admit my own brokenness, my own
wishes to be desired, the more I begin
to wish myself into a four-legged
monster bumbling around hoping
to maintain balance in a world
of glass and plastic. Isn’t desiring
and wishing to be desired hope
for balance? Maybe that’s what the Greeks
had in mind. Part of me enjoys
not knowing for sure.