by Jack Tricarico
The face on the windshield wasn’t your alter ego
On a desolate boulevard a neon hyena
Was chasing a pink negligee
So you didn’t see the garbage pails
And the picket fences were painted a dark color
Wasn’t it like farina in your eye
The way the moon came around
The last of the grey Mohicans
With that woman in curlers
Screaming her life was in ruin?
Maybe a little flaccid where her belly sagged
Over your saliva lips, you thought
But was her diary on the wall better than good pussy
The way you spilled into it?
“On Thursday a fortune cookie warned practice caution
The mailman had a black eye. At the museum
Jackson Pollock walked me through a wall
I try walking on rice paper backwards
Without wrinkling it to relieve my depression
Banging my head on the wall makes the neighbors complain
I hear this sound, something whirring like a colossal hornet
It’s like many different radio stations
Playing at the same time in my head
If only I could diminish myself I’d sleep in a shoe
Remembering every step of my life. No longer erased
By the next dance with my angel of doubt
Like yesterdays chain mail
Only the uninformed speak about their path”
So you said goodbye to the stream under the bridge
The stones that were arguing with you there
As you arranged them in circles
The woman asleep in her garden of lambs
You would return in another body
Poring over her bed like black oil
And she thought you were a ballet dancer
“Roll over Chaquita, let me show you my knots!”
Previously published in Hunger magazine.
