Robert Beveridge

The Gorilla Who Has Been Sitting

on my chest for the past three weeks asks me
how I feel about caramel, and specifically whether I believe
it makes for a good pizza topping. I have to pop
my inhaler before I answer. “If I say yes, will you
go into the kitchen and make us one?” He laughs.
“Never. You know I’m here as long as the virus is.”
He turns around, grabs the remote, dooms us both
to another house-flipping reality show marathon on HGTV.

The Prototypes Walked Out
of the Funding Meeting

There is a glitch in our contact
from Moscow. He has forgotten
how to do anything except say no.
This is not the impression we’d
like to make on billions of shareholders,
but when the ball is passed, you
take it down the field, no matter
how many spikes it has, how much coal
it’s filled with. There’s wine
in the carafes and disease in the air,
a thousand thousand hands, pencils
poised above pads, waiting to hear
what you think of all this. Make it count.

Robert Beveridge (he/him) makes noise (xterminal.bandcamp.com) and writes poetry in Akron, OH. Recent/upcoming appearances in Cordite Poetry Review, Stardust Haiku, and GAS: Poetry, Art, and Music, among others.