photo from pixabay
Boys on Bikes the summer of the boys on bikes we trade toy diaries with locks & miniature keys for soft- skinned ones bound in leather the charm of difference we hide in new places like a game of Clue for the boys on bikes afterwards, an outbreak of bark beetles cause nightmares on Elm street we were never as pretty as we once thought & lied to our diaries about the summer of the boys on bikes Sinkhole daddy said the sinkhole will take everything one day but he’s too busy chasing mermaids at Weeki Wachee to do anything about it the money daddy made wrestling gators at roadside stands could buy something solid but he bet it on Jai alai, lost, lost again & again & again, hatched a hairbrainer with his buddy Lou, Little Louie they call him to pinch a Gold of Kinabalu from R.F. Orchids the ground isn’t fit for anything, daddy said this after a three year stint for B&E after mom decamped to Cassadaga to realign to scream, to collapse on a floor embedded with rose-quartz crystals with other women looking for vibrational energy Bomb Threat it was the weekend Culta Fatima beat Subduing Mara at the Unitarian Church’s Battle of the Bands earlier in the day, Shane the older brother of Fatima’s lead guitarist called in a bomb threat from his shitty job at the Quick Mart we spent the afternoon sunbathing on the football bleachers, tops cropped as police dogs sniffed our lockers. Everybody knew what Shane was planning he’d peaked in high school & was as bored as we were —everything influences everything & that night Culta Fatima’s drummer tied gym socks around his sticks & set them on fire the guitar was a white-clad woman emitting burning rays of lights brighter than the sun later, clustered in the back of a Camry I hurled my virginity at you. It was ticking, ready to explode Mall Directory, 84' It’s a cruel summer. You go to the mall cry with Martha at Dippin’ Dots, Racheal over slices at Sbarro. I stay in and watch Miami Vice try to figure out Jan Hammer’s theme song on our son’s Casio. It was a big year for cartels. When Kmart purchased Waldenbooks it stopped selling Fangoria. Still can’t take a Tylenol without fear of cyanide poisoning. It was a big year for takeovers. We married too young, have known each other since Elementary School. Mall Directory says the divorce attorney leases space between Spencer Gifts and Camelot Music reliable, affordable, quick and easy. The metalheads flash Devil’s Horns as I go inside.
Bio: poet, writer. constant gardener. avid thursday tennis player. born upstate, lives in new england, raised on french symbolists. loves a good scone, pulpy paperbacks, synthesizers, architecture. poems featured in Book of Matches, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Otoliths, Roi Faineant Press, Sparks of Calliope, Datura, Cajun Mutt Press, A Thin Slice of Anxiety, Horror Sleaze Trash, The Beatnik Cowboy, and others. Take a look, or don’t: dmhubbs.blogspot.com
Fevers of the Mind 