silent siren
She holds her Mountain
Dew like a baby’s bottle.
Hot pink hair shouts
like a house fire in the night
against the cool blue of her satin
Kentucky Wildcat jacket.
The scream of color does little
to light up her aura,
dim and gray as this building.
≈
plague
is always a dirty
paw away.
a hand not washed
in who knows how long.
a hand stained by soil
and cigarette resin, the filth
permanent under fingernails.
a hand sprouting long claws
the color of skin, camouflaged,
each one, a hook, a tool to dig.
a hand counting out
eighty pennies for a soda.
≈
Milkshake Ricky
loves oatmeal cookies
and peanut butter shakes,
dresses in cutoff sweats
over full length
sweats, looks like he flew
out of the cuckoo’s nest,
lost four pair of glasses
and two umbrellas
last week.
Milkshake Ricky is losing
more than his mind. The way
he fumbles through
layers of worn cotton
searching for his billfold
he may have also
lost what little
money there is left
from his monthly check.
“Milkshake Ricky” originally appeared in North of Center and is reprinted here with permission of the author.
≈
alarm clock
He used to rest
comfortably until seven eleven,
the time his alarm clock
starts shouting the get up song.
But since she left
and has gone on, her ghost
wakes him every morning.
Three hours before sunrise
and he can’t turn it off.
