DON KINGFISHER CAMPBELL

★ ★ ★ ★

POETRY

There’s Nothing You Can’t Write About

watching my sister get bit by a Doberman Pinscher from across the street

popping an Excedrin from a bottle fished out of a trash can on the way to
second grade after watching TV

pooping on a little hillside at school during Easter vacation

stealing a Snickers bar from my friend’s desk when he wasn’t looking

masturbating to a newspaper picture behind an observatory

stepping on the gas instead of the brake in the driveway of our house as my
mother screamed in the shotgun seat

losing my virginity to my future first wife while in her studio apartment
just after my eighteenth birthday

inviting the co-ed in the tight knit blouse to go out for coffee then taking
it off on our living room sofa since my second wife was at work

vomiting all over a white porcelain toilet bowl upon hearing of the death of
my father of cancer at 3am

kicking my son out the door for sticking needles in his arm in the bathroom
as I was listening to music

writing the poem that tells secrets the world need never have known but now
voraciously reads because it’s explicit, it’s bad, it’s poetry,
maybe it will comfort someone

but I did leave something out

Don Kingfisher Campbell, MFA in Creative Writing from Antioch University Los Angeles, has taught Writers Seminar at Occidental College Upward Bound for 33 years, been a coach and judge for Poetry Out Loud, a performing poet/teacher for Red Hen Press Youth Writing Workshops, Los Angeles Area Coordinator and Board Member of California Poets In The Schools, poetry editor of the Angel City Review, publisher of Spectrum and the San Gabriel Valley Poetry Quarterly, leader of the Emerging Urban Poets writing and Deep Critique workshops, organizer of the San Gabriel Valley Poetry Festival, and host of the Saturday Afternoon Poetry reading series in Pasadena, California. For awards, features, and publication credits, please go to his blog.

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