Bare Feet and Feathers

The Queen of Meatloaf Crosses her legs And bounces her Keds. Day-lily smile, a liberated intellect, Spraying her education. Remembering her shoulders, she shifts in her seat and laughs. The King of Corks traces condensation on his glass and ‘huh-huhs’ his laugh. Cratered eyes, a bedroom glance, he is pretending he might be listening but is thinking of the next thing to say. He stares at his socks and wonders. The galaxy implodes in a rain of thoughts that fluoresce on their green altar. It evaporates the bats from the night like ideas that might have been had but can’t be remembered. It makes the raccoons rush home to rescue the lasagna they left in the oven. The King and Queen dance on the back deck in a silver rain, a silent film. Someone poke the piano player. Hot buttered popcorn all around! Let’s see how this one ends; if the child grows up happy and saves the world. Asparagus erupts in its corner while rhubarb whispers its bitter secrets and Re...

You’re concentrating on the butter on your corn muffin; undulating and unctuous sin quenching the coffee’s acrid shadow loitering between your teeth and drifting on the nicotine. Marlboro hoarseness hanging on your vocal chords like the corpse of an octogenarian burlesque dancer; adagio in the guilty glimmer, glimpsing last night’s lapses of judgment crushed in your grimace tic furrow your brow behind clenched eyes and try not to watch that train wreck again and again. Dull gong thud head pounding like a beggar stuck in a closet with a million blackmail photos that no one wants to see. You found ten more ride tickets the day after the carnival closed but you showed up anyway and wished you had brought that girl from high school so you could both be naked on the tilt-a-whirl and you could eat cotton candy together and you would be the hero that won the water balloon race but you didn’t because you were in the backyard twenty-five years later looking for yo...