"Thee Countdown" by Joseph Reich

Dec 29, 20242 min read

on television to capture you

they show you a countdown

to christmas a countdown

to elections all pretty much

interchangeable like some

demented form of survival

of the fittest bottled-up

instant-gratification can

make in 3 easy payments

to attempt to achieve that

unreachable holy happiness

that high school sweetheart

or god just couldn’t get while

most just try to top it all off

with either a bottle of bourbon

or bottle of opiates or if so

choose to be one of those

brutish one-upping competitive

extroverted idiots at health club

where can relive your whole half

witted childhood all over again

with real-life reflections in the

he-man mythological mirror as

some sort of bully or jock or stud

slut bending over for the father

next door but best of all got

that countdown to elections

that countdown to christmas

can conveniently collapse

& store all safe & secure

right below your bed

where that monster

once lived in your head

Joseph D. Reich is a social worker who lives with his wife and teenage son in the high-up mountains of Vermont. He has been published in a wide variety of eclectic literary

journals both here and abroad, been nominated seven times for The Pushcart Prize, and his books include...

If I Told You To Jump Off The Brooklyn Bridge (Flutter Press)

A Different Sort of Distance (Skive Magazine Press)

Pain Diary: Working Methadone & The Life & Times Of The Man Sawed In Half (Brick Road Poetry Press)

Drugstore Sushi (Thunderclap Press)

The Derivation Of Cowboys & Indians (Fomite Press)

The Housing Market: a comfortable place to jump off the end of the world (Fomite Press)

The Hole That Runs Through Utopia (Fomite Press)

Taking The Fifth And Running With It: a psychological guide for the hard of hearing and blind (Broadstone Books)

The Hospitality Business (Valeviel Press)

Connecting The Dots To Shangrila: A Postmodern Cultural Hx Of America (Fomite Press)

A Case Study Of Werewolves (Fomite Press)

The Rituals Of Mummification (Sagging Meniscus Press)

Magritte’s Missing Murals: Insomniac Episodes (Sagging Meniscus Press)

How To Shoot A Tourist (with a bow & arrow) In A Hot-Air Balloon (Sagging Meniscus Press)

How To Order Chinese During A Hostage Crisis: Dialects, Existential Essays, A Play, And Other Poems (Hog Press)

American Existentialism (Tuba Press)

An Eccentric Urban Guide To Surviving (Analog Submission Press)

The American Book Of The Dead (Xi Draconis Books)

From Premonition To Prophecy (Delinkwent Scholar Press)

Statutes Of David (Pen & Anvil Press)

Aphoristic Variations: a trilogy (Makeshift Press)

I Know Why Old Men Sit In Front Of Windows All Day, Sighing & Crying & Living & Dying When The Sun Goes Down On The City At Night (Kung-Fu Treachery Press)