King and Trumpet
One night I was drunk at the Heartland,
And, apparently, I spoke to Dan, the bartender,
Because his roommate called the next night to say,
“My roommate, Dan, was your bartender last night.
I hope you don’t think I’m crazy for calling like this?”
A few hours later, after cocktails at the Green Mill,
She invited me home and screamed when she flipped
The lights on to find her chows, King and Trumpet,
Each with a dead kitten hanging from their mouth,
Which I wrapped in tin foil and buried them warm
In the backyard by moonlight smoking a Lucky.
That Sunday we met up near the Shell with the “S”
Burned out at the corner of Touhy before heading
To Leone Beach. She was so small, all that fit her
Was this worn out pink girls’ bikini she later made
A point of saying was see-through, her bobbed hair
Bobbing with baby-blue ribbons, nearly horizontal
In flip-flops and giant sunglasses, trying to hold back
Her chows. She’s a cop, a mom, and a boxer now,
Yet years before we met, when she was a stripper
In New York, she would shoot junk into the cowgirls
Riding torpedoes on her forearms, but after the beach,
She made us chicken and corn on the cob. Her hope
Was I’d write more and drink less, while she—
With the giant dogs at her tiny feet—painted
The monolith from 2001: A Space Odyssey over
A clown from her collection of John Wayne Gacy
Originals surrounding the bed where we made
Love and I first read The Double Dream of Spring.
Mise en Abyme
An erotic life
Of boredom
Enacts a fake
Movie with
Real violence,
Sincere as sun
Sparks lightning.
Looking out
Closed eyes,
Sagacity’s field
Is in arrears—
Video feedback,
Beside the point,
History a habit.
from A Better Place Is Hard To Find by Aaron Fagan (The Song Cave, 2020). Photo credit: Camilla Ha.
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