Jeffrey Kingman

Civil War Porch with Ant

He looks like an ant on that porch a mile away.
But it’s easy to ignore physical flaws.
I’ll recycle a line from an old poem (no one will notice)
or paint instead a southern-tea rocking chair.
A tiny bug in a glass is easy to ignore.
What does it mean to “freshen your mouth”?
That old line from a recycled poem is a mile away.
If a leg is bent, no one will blame me. Call it a knee.
For detailed imagery, I like the word fuchsia
or paint an old gentleman with cookie-crumb chin.
A brown bug in brown liquid no one will notice.

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Jeffrey Kingman lives by the Napa River in Vallejo, California. His poetry collection, Beyond That Hill I Gather, was published by Finishing Line Press in June of 2021. His poetry chapbook, On a Road, was published by Finishing Line Press in December of 2019. He is the winner of the 2018 Eyelands Book Award (Greece) for an unpublished poetry book, a finalist in the 2018 Hillary Gravendyk poetry book competition and a finalist in the 2022 Prime Number Magazine Award for Poetry. He has poems published in PANK, Clackamas Literary Review, Crack the Spine, Visitant and others. Jeffrey is a copy editor at Omnidawn Publishing. He has a Master’s degree in Music Composition and has been playing drums in rock bands most of his life.