Cindy’s Living Room
Due to the fisheye lens
her face obscures the room
except for the blue couch extending
to a vanishing point beyond Neptune
and a red armchair out in the Kuiper belt.
I can only speculate about what’s hidden.
Perhaps a pet capybara named Norman
who wakes the neighbours at 2:00 AM
by splashing in the bathtub.
Perhaps the pentagram used to reanimate
Rodney Dangerfield in miniature.
The comic kept next to a cup of pens
on Cindy’s desk and rewarded
with an eyedropper of CBD oil
for every pun he contributes to her poems.
Certainly, there is a Donald Trump voodoo doll.
The pin thrust through its heart
hasn’t affected the real Donald so far
David’s Cat Named “Butter”
does not melt when he sits on a baked potato. Despite the mise en place of litter box and laser pointer, David’s kitchen will never earn a Michelin star. The reviewer spat out cat hairs after tasting the lobster thermidor and walked out. The smart money is on Butter’s rivals Bechamel the Beagle, Velouté the Vicuña, Espagnole the Elephant, Sauce Tomate the Tapir, and Hollandaise the Hamster.
Nathan’s Jaguar Bride
never has to ask him to take out the garbage twice. I’m referring to panthera onca, not the automobile built by British Leyland but that might make a fun poem, too. Marriage always takes adjustment. Park Police are on guard lest she use the Washington Monument as a scratching post, the cat food bills are enough to bankrupt a small country, and you need a backhoe to dispose of the woolly mammoths she leaves on the front porch. There are advantages. Pterodactyl droppings haven’t splattered neighbourhood cars in decades and her purrs will send you to sleep like one of those Magic Fingers beds you feed with quarters in hotel rooms.
Marital spats are inevitable. Just one piece of advice. Make sure to keep the batteries in your laser pointer charged.
Marc’s Hat
It’s flatter than a flounder squashed by a steam roller, not that they’re powered by steam these days. Gasoline of diesel are more likely. It’s called a newsboy cap like the hats worn by shipyard workers back in the days of the Washington Naval Treaty when steam pushed battlecruisers through the oceans. But don’t confuse it with a tam o shanter and the mercury that gives Mad Hat its name. The world can’t deal with an epidemic of crazy Scotsmen all quoting David Hume to their imaginary bagpipes but the Flying Scotsman was a steam-powered train that never left the ground as far as I know.
There’s a long tradition of sages wearing fish on their heads dating back to ancient Sumer. They charted the course of planets from atop ziggurats taller than Hong Kong’s Victoria Peak and Herman Melville’s Greylock Mountain combined.
This hat’s been all over the world but not to Iraq as far as I know. What of its Romanian connection? Is there any relation to a Transylvanian castle with plumbing problems? Be that as it may, it inhabits a haberdashery where there are more dust motes, atoms in a mole of gas, and Planck lengths in a meter of thread than people.
Patricia’s Christmas Tree
is still green in July. Maybe there’s a cursed portrait of Dorian Bonsai with loose dentures and needles gone to grey. Maybe it’s a vampire. I hear vampire trees prey on vegetables not people. Though, it must be a shock to open the crisper drawer and find the zucchini sucked dry through fang marks in its green skin. If Patricia’s pantry is not enough, the tree transforms into a helicopter seed that spirals out the window to feed on Park Avenue sugar maples. Of course, helicopter seeds can’t fly back upstairs. The tree’s walk of shame past a smirking doorman is worth it because every day in Patricia’s penthouse is Christmas.
Jon Wesick is a regional editor of the San Diego Poetry Annual. He’s published hundreds of poems and stories in journals such as the Atlanta Review, Berkeley Fiction Review, I-70 Review, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Lowestoft Chronicle, New Verse News, Paterson Literary Review, Pearl, Pirene's Fountain, Slipstream, Space and Time, and Unlikely Stories Mark V. His most recent books are The Shaman in the Library and The Prague Deception. http://jonwesick.com
No comments:
Post a Comment