Aught, no. 11/12 (2003)
Dylan Willoughby
thumbs
up on the bearish world
where cancelled talks reverberate
like the ghosts of scratched
chalkboards, there are just no
MRIs to be had for celebrity
plumbers, and the chinese
alligators hog up the truth
call it a stone’s throw
away from here
my heart broke when you left
to study terns and ten years
after, the moss grown all
over my face, and the
monkeys done left, I wonder
about the freeway — what used
to be the freeway — now reduced
to a balcony scene
on this abandoned set…
was
hired in the lost reference
department, on the outskirts of glory
off
the turnpike yonder, while just
a girl out of school, sweeping your
floors
with many-colored brooms
and drunk, as on a ghastly holiday,
on
the vaguest gloom, whole pools
of woe, and I was the poolkeeper too
straining
happiness out of the tub,
sometimes John would come and visit,
down
from Patmos —when we kissed
it tasted like tart wine, too tart —
how
old I’ve grown in your years
my tongue wanted to say but hurt
from
biting it, and while John from
Patmos was on the payphone, I
slipped
away, which is sort of how
I wound up here, conversing with fire
Is
it the purple year?
And who has come hailing
The power of the lugnut?
We wait on the edge
Of our seats, seeing the rinse
Cycle near its conclusion.
She says it smells like "take-out."
No
one takes it seriously:
It doesn't rain, and won't comply
To our wishes. All year the tires
Seem to be flat. Little boys
Marvel at the hissing sound. You
Roll the sound of those flowers
On your tongue: tormentil.
Copyright © 2003, by the author.
All rights reserved.
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