A Conversation
A balloon was in his mouth
Expanding against his palate
Pushing the backs of his teeth.
His friend,
Whom he had been talking to,
Seemed apprehensive but not altogether spooked. The balloon continued to grow.
His mouth was now about halfway open,
And his friend could see the crown of it in the gap. It was a nice shade of blue.
Through some worming and pushing
The balloon managed to get out
And fell into the hands of the friend.
He regarded it for a moment;
Polished it with his sleeve like an apple on a teacher’s desk And popped it with a small pinprick.
When the noise died down,
They resumed their conversation.
The friend felt a strange tension in his throat.
The Lake
Out of
The lake
The big dense bolder pushed and pushed
Stretching the skim top like cellophane
Breaking with a splash.
Settling at a bob,
It revealed itself to be a soft pink flesh
Like a hermit crab in between shells.
Blinking in the moon
Its eyes glazed cold.
“I once saw a bird take off from here,”
It said,
“I saw the effort of its flight.
It strained and rippled in the headwinds
But it has stayed in the air ever since.
It has not come back near me.”
A sigh was then heard across the water as far as it would go.
The night rolled on.
The flesh sucked its teeth
And slinked beneath the surface with a sag.
Geese combed the mud for morsels
Their slimy feet kicking the breeze
Over their downy white bottoms.
The Big Game
I was watching the game
And a man came knocking at the door and
I opened the door and he
Walked right past me and sat on the couch.
He cracked open a beer and
Began to comment so I
Bantered with him.
When the game ended I went up to bed
But when I came down in the morning he was still there
Still cheering
And drinking his beer
