Iceland (ii)
a triolet
as if chess & chocolate cake wasn’t
enough to cause bad dreams
in the dream Bobby Fischer
blunders elf rocks at the puffins,
sky coloured in the luminosity of Harpa’s
glass-walled screams
as if chess & chocolate cake wasn’t
enough to cause bad dreams
black houses of hanging rock, red
planet doors agleam
the tallowed wind, killed twice in the
Faroes, tastes of lichens
as if chess & chocolate cake wasn’t
enough to cause bad dreams
in the dream Bobby Fischer
blunders elf rocks at the puffins
Briar Rose
the Gen-X sleeping beauty
woke with no chance
of circling back
her skin was intensely itchy, and she
felt—
watching clouds briar the sky
like Jean-Paul Marat
lying dead in the bathtub,
her quill and inkwell
entombed in tannic puckered hands
as stakeholders of low-hanging fruit
skipped stones unspindled
from Empress plums
Pretty Mouths
the adults are talking, pretty mouths
what’s the time, Mr. Wolf?
the distant din of backyard games
goes on and on and the sun’s red-gold
snout sniffs the surface of pretty
ponds
darkening hills, blades of blue eyed
grass
the adults are talking, on and on
the clock counting one, two, three
past lunch
until the seed head is blown away
us, in the distant din of backyard
games
stepping like apples and pears, tic
tac
signals bookmaking our countdown
to the dark—
what are they playing at
those adults with wolfish mouths?
Hutch
plink,
plink
plink
it’s the rain
not a blaze orange
vest man pulling delicate
watercolour from my fur.
I’m ear boxed
in this squatter’s doorway,
droppings sweat the floor
and my stomach
is filled with balls
of hair.
straw girl, straw girl
you adored me, grew bored
of me, neglected
me near the root
of a fir tree with no place
to stretch and unbox
but the sight
of pink and purple petunias
chinning the old stone wall
is a reminder
of Aphrodite’s gift
so I wait for the leader
of the Wild Hunt
and a procession of hares
bearing torches
to flick
and flitter the straw girl
from her hutch
Sprezzatura! and the Birds of Paradise
I wear my wristwatch over my shirt
cuff
and my back tie blade longer than my
front
when I visit the actress at the
community theatre.
I am drowned, I am drowned
she says, and I can’t tell if she’s
misquoting Shakespeare
or making it sound like she’s
misquoting Shakespeare—
her tongue unbuttoned and feigning no
effort at all.
She says, honeybear, everything that
went wrong in the rehearsal room
made its way to the stage. And when I
tell her
I didn’t live up to my Dad’s
expectations of being involved in sports
she says, that’s your drowned look
talking;
it’s your eyes flashing like
off-the-rack jackets
pupils rolling like unlocked sets
across the rickety stage of your face.
She’s romantic, the actress at the
community theatre.
I brought her roses and a parakeet on
opening night
and we’ve been lovebirds since her
turn as Arkadina in The Seagull.
The Figurehead Chair points to the tie
dangling
like a single arrow over my crotch and
says, sprezzatura! Bravo.
He dreams of having an apartment on
Plympton Street
and winning the Boylston Prize for
Rhetoric
although our love was imperfectly
perfect, the dagger comes quick.
The actress at the community theatre leads with a smile
when the Charming Sociopath shows up
on a drizzly day
in May, umbrellaless and drowned
deeper than a duck
and sings a love song about baking her
into a pie
Damon Hubbs: film & art lover /
pie bird collector / author of the chapbook "The Day Sharks Walk on
Land" (Alien Buddha Press). When not chapbooking about walking sharks,
Damon writes poems about 1970s heavy metal, girls who cry at airports, and
swimming pools the color of Italian liquors. Recent work featured in Fixator
Press, The Beatnik Cowboy and Apocalypse Confidential.
@damon_hubbs
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