John Milbury-Steen
teaches English as a Second Language at Temple University, Philadelphia. He received a Master’s in Creative Writing from Indiana University, Bloomington, studying with Ruth Stone.
He served in the Peace Corps in Liberia, West Africa and has worked as an artificial intelligence programmer in Computer Based Education at the University of Delaware.
Among his publishing credits are The Beloit Poetry Journal, Blue Unicorn, Dark Horse, The Piedmont Literary Review and Shenandoah.
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Revenge
In print, with kick of print, I’ll get him back.
I will disgrace him. Under my attack
his business will go under and his cheek
will go all pallid and he will get sick
and I will hear him coughing, hear him hack!
A cough can be an aphrodisiac!
And when he croaks one winter on a grate,
I’ll chuck him on the dump where gulls can fight
over his stinking sleaze, his rotten meat,
leaving only bones that will go white
by rusty hulks of fridges which that cheat
sold with tricky warranties. I’ll sit
enthroned in the open air in victory’s camp,
crowned with bays of flies as champ, not chump,
triumphant as a monument through time
and yet exalted in my humble pomp,
at peace at last, as simple as a tramp
living off the bounty of the dump.
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