Freshest Taste Within 110 Days by Ben Newell

I’ll admit
it doesn’t take much to excite me
in these days
of mid-fortysomething.

The local Kroger
has started carrying Busch Classic.

Prior to this
they only stocked Busch Light, a particularly pale
and diluted version
of
the real deal—

And this may seem pathetic
to you
but I don’t know you
and
you don’t know me.

But that can change, baby, if you’re willing
to hit me up
at
(601) 613-3266.

I’m partial to gynecological selfies
on drunken Sunday afternoons
in celebration
of poems I do my damndest to make clear
as mountain air.

Ben Newell, 43, works as a library clerk at a small college in Jackson, Mississippi. His poems have appeared in The Blood Machine, Chiron Review, LUMMOX, Nerve Cowboy, Pink Litter, and other underground publications. He is a Bennington College dropout.