“The Winning Ticket”
If the tuba-voiced telemarketer I hung up on
won the Megabucks jackpot,
he'd torpedo his reality shitcom
about the vagaries and vicissitudes
of wage-bondage with benefits
before booking a pilgrimage to Sandusky, Ohio
because he longs to
solemnly photobomb Lake Erie.
Then he'd shod his tumid toes with
cobalt blue loafers and
step into an unsteady paso doble solo-
because dollars don't cure klutziness
or loneliness-
in the direction of a diner dripping with
that shade of olive found on '70s stoves for
a lozenge of baklava, and
he'd surprise the sylphlike stranger behind
him with whatever she craved
just to sample casual philanthropy before
hieing himself home to relish his
recently realized raison d'être
as an unrepentant lord of leisure
by juxtaposing jellybean-hued jalopies in
testosterone-streaked classic car classifieds
to determine which one he'd drive
if he knew how and
by crafting and scattering internet rumors like
the ersatz truth that the etymological parent of
Fred Flintstone's “Yabba Dabba Doo”
is an erstwhile Estonian exclamation
that means “Hallelujah!”
“T. dohrnii”
Turritopsis dohrnii is the spitting image of
a slice of maraschino cherry in aspic
surrounded by slender tentacles identical to
the vermicelli-like branches on
my Aunt Penny's fiber-optic Christmas tree.
While randy Imperial Romans rhapsodized over Venus,
Vikings and Skrælings skirmished in Vinland,
Wyomingite women menstruated messily into pioneer petticoats,
Polari-speaking sodomites got arrested in swinging London,
and the French Fifth Republic lopped off its last head,
the immortal jellyfish jauntily propelled itself
or reposed peacefully as a polyp,
smugly shrugging off
our necrophobic neuroses.
“Credit Where It's Due”
She can’t remember not knowing him,
the chocolate house, the one with the gingkos,
and his flame-haired, Liquid Paper-pale presence.
She counted on them as she counted on wet February mornings
and lightning bugs on popsicle-flavoured August nights.
He was the steadfast bastard who missed Marty's make-out party
populated with sure things
just to keep her company when she was scratching her chickenpox,
the bad influence
who procured her inaugural Gauloise,
the confidant who clammed up about her split Levis
despite his God-given gift of gossip.
Years have melted, exams and lovers have been fretted over,
but his exquisitely chosen, obscenity-laden words
were the ones that always soothed her
and made Fanta fly from her nostrils.
No comments:
Post a Comment