Damon Hubbs – Cajun Mutt Press

Cajun Mutt Press Featured Writer 05/01/24

May 1, 2024 James D. Casey IV

Gros Michel

The tu-whit
tu-whoo
of wrench
and workbench,
the whip-poor-will
of machines
gives me eczema.
Doctor says the buffalo hump is a seismic swarm
caused by the tallest stack on the skyline.
The herbarium once had something for that.
In Bologna, Ulisse Aldrovandi
cut and dried 5,000 plants.
I wear an aerosol wig
and like a Gros Michel my roots are infected
an internal necrosis
of tension discs
and winches—
the United Fruit Company calls it Panama disease.
I once had a handwritten recipe
a remedy
for plague, fevers
smallpox and surfeits.
O’ the popular errors
poisoned by the poison antidote,
a sharp metal bedfellow
green as a blade
in my soiled throat.

Damon Hubbs: gardener / casual birder / lapsed tennis player / author of the chapbooks ‘Coin Doors & Empires‘ (Alien Buddha Press) and ‘The Day Sharks Walk on Land‘ (Alien Buddha Press) / recent work appears/is forthcoming in Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Acropolis Journal, Apocalypse Confidential, Dreich, Broken Antler, Red Ogre Review, and elsewhere. Twitter @damon_hubbs

Cajun Mutt Press Featured Writer 11/17/23

November 17, 2023 James D. Casey IV

Teenage Diplomats

we slouch the hood of your shitty Sentra to get closer to the stars
listening to Manfred Mann’s Earth Band on WZOZ
Jason says he’s fishing but he’s just using carp as target practice
still bitching about how I slept with his sister at New Paltz
seduced her when I asked for a pen in Intro to Philosophy
I tell him it was the easiest way I could fuck him
and then you turn to me and say
I want to fuck Jason too, so we
spend the night blinded in the moonlight
shooting fish in a barrel

Damon Hubbs is the author of three chapbooks: Coin Doors & Empires (Alien Buddha Press), The Day Sharks Walk on Land (Alien Buddha Press), and Fly Creek (forthcoming from Naked Cat Publishing). His poems have been featured in Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Roi Fainéant Press, Otoliths, APOCALYPSE CONFIDENTIAL, Does It Have Pockets, and elsewhere. He lives in New England.
Twitter: @damon_hubbs

Cajun Mutt Press Featured Writer 08/11/23

August 11, 2023 James D. Casey IV

Flies

All day my mother
Swallows flies
Like some kind of allegory
Of love

My father says
It’s going to be okay
But he’s lied
Since the beginning

To us
And himself
And who knows what
He says to God

Or whoever it is
He talks to
When he socket wrenches the ceiling
In the dead of night

The flies don’t care.
They keep coming,
Quivering on my mother’s lip
Until the rattle sucks them under

Damon Hubbs is the author of three chapbooks: Coin Doors & Empires (Alien Buddha Press), The Day Sharks Walk on Land (Alien Buddha Press), and Fly Creek (forthcoming from Naked Cat Publishing). His poems have been featured in Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Roi Fainéant Press, Otoliths, APOCALYPSE CONFIDENTIAL, Does It Have Pockets, and elsewhere. He lives in New England.
Twitter: @damon_hubbs

Cajun Mutt Press Featured Writer 06/26/23

June 26, 2023 James D. Casey IV

Ritual

a buddy and I play tennis every Thursday  
     under the lights on the blue hard courts 
          at the old high school. There’s a small 

stream that slides against an alley of woodland 
    and sometimes at dusk we see deer and rabbits  
          and errant house cats. Tonight we’re deep 

into the fourth set when a sudden whoop of laugher 
     shanks our concentration. A volley of clanking 
          bottles, more laughter and a baseline of 

ghost notes drum from the wooded alley 
     by the stream. At first we can’t tell 
          what sort of ritual is taking place 

but as we approach it starts to make sense.
     Why do you play tennis without a net
          asks one of the girls gathered on the grass
           
it’s a good question, and one we revisit often
     in times of doubt. But before I can 
          open my mouth my partner says

the same reason witches dance 
     in the woods without clothes
          lobbing laughter and music at the moon

©2023 Damon Hubbs All rights reserved.

Damon Hubbs is interested in leisurely games of tennis & perfectly moist coffee cake. His poems have been published in numerous journals with recent works featured in Otoliths, Synchronized Chaos, Streetcake, Roi Fainéant Press, Don’t Submit!, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Book of Matches, Exist Otherwise & Horror Sleaze Trash. He lives in New England.

Cajun Mutt Press Featured Writer 03/03/23

March 3, 2023 James D. Casey IV

Housekeeping

the sun fights a turf war on my eyelids
and I wake, head quaking, to the big
knockover. “Housekeeping. Do you

want your room serviced? Sir, hello
housekeeping.” The room is dank and
asphyxiated. It takes a good five minutes

while I rearrange the mental furniture
before I see the dead hooker lying next
to me, face gouged in pillows, black hair

on a bed of roses and an anchor tattoo on the
back of her thigh. Bruises climb her skin and
there’s bottles of booze and a “silver member”

card on the nightstand nipple-zipped with
Florida snow. In a seasick wave the room
tilts &

I lunge towards the bathroom to throw up.
“Hello? Housekeeping.” I wipe my mouth.
“Yes,” I say. “Yes, just a minute.” And that’s

when the dead hooker rises from the dead.
I’m already at the door, cock half-hanging
out of the hotel robe, telling the Slavic girl

that I forgot to hang the Do Not Disturb
sign and that my wife and I overslept —it’s
our anniversary. But by then she’s behind

me, her face studded with makeup, her
back-alley babydoll lingerie trafficking
a tart coital come on. She flashes an ankle

bracelet and asks housekeeping if she’d
like to join us for a little role playing.
We’d be happy to pay for her services.

Damon Hubbs is interested in pulpy paperbacks and films with over-saturated colors. Recent poems have been featured in The Beatnik Cowboy, Scud, Datura, The Chamber Magazine, and Horror Sleaze Trash. Links to his published work can be found at dmhubbs.blogspot.com. Damon lives in New England.