It Came Out Wrong

Like a cough turning to a sputter
of acid spew from wasteland psyche-
when it verged on gospel I transferred
to oblivion.

Last rites before cracking the safe with
colonies of termites teeming, an
insight into the black holes you
can’t get enough of, never enough-

shoes and starched shirts ill-fitting.
The body born outside a factory
in a dim-lit alley off a side street
from…

Where’s that black hole end anyway?

In the middle of a pitch or field a maiden
baking in the sun naked, a victim, a
sacrifice, a ‘pick me’ girl in the pitch-black
night: common ground for timelessness.

So when the horses go on strike it falls
on candlelit vigilantism to rectify,
say old van Gogh jerking in a cornfield,

since
the cops always appear when you
don’t need ‘em and are never there
when you do.

But lack of holes won’t complement a
face eager to kiss off at the finish line.

Flags don’t fit either, not on moons
or ocean liners,
at the races or pirated, jammed in some
hole to stanch the
blood, mucus, sweat,
from the bottomed out quake of
stormtroop marching-

uniform tight at the pits and crotch,
strangling the apple, mutating the core.

Pin a medal on it to witness sudden
bursts of supernova.

Old blind Rembrandt astral-projecting from
the vanishing point, his varnished panel of mahogany.

Petty Crimes

Keys on the zinc counter with the
Renault parked on the roof

Dogs named Socket and Brass

Small dogs, old men
Talif the student
Kalif the king

El trains, babel of human sewage
The urge is to snarl and shred
Corner bodega inviting
petty crimes

I look her in the eye like from a thousand
pop songs
there’s been idiocy before too

and when it rains it rains like automatic weapons having
a party

Dogs named Eisen and Kreuz
Sordid old men

Rear-most chambre de bonne
at Le Roi
Cold as the walk-in reefer at the 7-11
off Saint-Augustin

the Pekingese patiently watching the sex between
Genevieve and
Sophie

Later queueing up for apéritifs
dine-and-dash being American slang

Jay Passer‘s work has appeared in print and online periodicals and anthologies since 1988. He is the author of 12 collections of poetry and prose, most recently The Cineaste (Alien Buddha Press, 2021). Passer lives in San Francisco, the city of his birth.

You can find more of Jay’s work here on Ink Pantry.