Well chop the houses down for lumber, dis- encumber picture-perfect perfect tense & tense up sphincters under right-to-work embargoes, while my right & left wings beat against
the perch. We percolate in dive-bars for the privilege of huffing HuffPo hand-me-downs from paper bags, & bag-lunch beauty queens interpret paintings of the long-forecast foreclosure under wraps. If I were on the DL, I’d assure you my insurance would extinguish
all your hopes, break windows in the business precinct, preening all my feathers till I burst in flames for free. This gratis bargaining for kisses in regalia of the old-guard cut- &-paste entails more mooring under streetlights than the light-of-foot could foot the bill to pay. But, tonight, my nickel-plated solid-love revolver sells the imprecise schematics for a fix, & then we’ll scheme imperiously, spitting fire up & casing shells back like the fixed stars didn’t spin. Spill everywhere & tempt me back to spirits, exorcised & lookin good, where pretty kids can shave the meat from unsuspecting skeletons to sell on-spec & skim the profits for themselves. So I declaimed that in the row-boat, rapt & absent, while the night around me wept, renouncing all its Paracelsus monographs & hope. Yes, I was a good catch in the boom-time, but in the post-’08 I’m every mother’s dream.
31 The Paris-American
Allen Edwin Butt is from South Carolina, currently living in Leipzig, Germany. Publications include InDigest, West Wind Review,Peaches & Bats, and Poetry. He co-edits O'clock Press and its magazine, CLOCK.
