Juggling slugs as broad as our sovereign star
This is the story I told Lao Tzu
over ACV shots down at the
moldy arroyo. His only response
was a giggle
at this and that.
She blushed like the little orange hearts upon
tulip poplar petals ensconced in their sallow
and rain-slopped wax paper paddocks.
She combed all the rolling wold for the
four-footed clover though found only
broken bolts and this sticky astringent stench
of bradford pear flowers nagging at prattling
grass blades—she splinted a bolt
with some chewing gum stolen
from friends and, forging a thong
from a twig and some flyaways
plucked from a tussock of monkshood,
cocked it taut as a pregnant pause, took
aim at the hem of the stammering sun,
and let fingers slip from the buckling tresses,
and gawked, the bolt slopped broken again
‘twixt hollyhocks blue and black and bay,
as the shadow snapped back from the buckling
hair bent under and over their sovereign star now
sundered, the heat of twinned worlds amongst them
sprung into whimsically sizzling dissonance.
There was no motto begot of this,
gummed to a coat of arms and no
ticklish maxims mounted—
this was the world now,
that which was and
that which is left split
in a quickening instant.
2 thoughts on "Juggling slugs as broad as our sovereign star"
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
I love this. The way the kaleidoscope snaps into focus in those last two stanzas—almost shocking, like taking a ride in a very fast car and pulling up just short of the cliff.
Your delights are manifold
& wondrous.
Last stanza a killer poem
unto itself