The things you mumbled

at your tattooist’s

 

cold apartment

had little consequence.

 

You said the honour

of public greatness

 

is to be sweetly veiled

in pigeon droppings.

 

Having recently discovered

Sherry you’ve forgotten

 

most of the last month.

Still, I’m enchanted

 

with how you let

the word Dubrovnik

 

roll around your mouth

like some forgotten

 

tonic. You sprawled out

in the witchgrass

 

like a wounded insomniac

and this prism you insist

 

I window wash

has a crooked bullseye

 

slumped around a gross

misunderstanding

 

of what it really means

to act like evil twins.

 

There is only one true

vandal; let your eyes

 

orbit around the room.

You’re mumbling again;

 

it sounds like you’re saying

I’m fond of widows.

 

We’re moving inappropriately

through Amontillado,

 

lightly headed for a mile

wide in-limbo.

 

Do you ever want to poke

around in the sticky

 

ink of something more

intimate? Less rhetorical?

 

I’m an old car in mint

condition. You’re marooned

 

in an equinox as the melon

queen of tattoo parlors.

 

+++

 

From subTerrain #68 (Pulp Fiction)