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My feet always smell. That’s the problem.
My wife says I am running on fumes.
She says she is being asphyxiated.
She says she is choking. I say today
I might die. She says, good.
Are we in need of a poetry of sadness?
I feel no need to seek out fellow martyrs.
Suffering all alone is the poetry. Country
music is nothing if not lonely. The women
are not nearly as distraught as the men.
Cowboy hats make slim men look sexy.
Fat men never look sexy, with or without
head gear. Fat women needn’t worry about
what they wear. Cowboy boots are all about
the fear of flying. Shoot, everyone knows that.
Keep them dawwgies rollin’, Rawhide!
American Pastries is rolling out new products
from their industrial-sized ovens in Louisville,
Kentucky. Mohammed Ali is their spokesman.
They show him kneading dough, naked, in a cloud
of white flour.
Ali has a cue stick in one hand and a rolling pin
in the other. The phone on the wall is singing Dixie.
It is 1957. Elvis is having his lips enhanced. Levy’s
has invented bell-bottoms. My father says he always
wanted to dance like Elvis.
Lincoln is fixing to design the most beautiful
automobile ever conceived. My neighbor’s
dachshund ate my pet rabbit. Our parakeet
lies stiff as a corn dog on the bottom of its cage.
Pete & Sam’s Wednesday night special ran out.
Keep them dawwgies rollin’, Rawhide!
I learned to obey in the fifth grade. Ten
years later, my teacher, Mrs. Knowland,
dropped by to ask after me. My father
demanded to know what I had done
to attract her attention. “Well?”
There are tanks in the street. Curfew is
from six. The National Guard has been called
in. They are using the parking lot at Carondolet
Plaza as a staging area. The mayor has announced
that looters will be shot without warning.
Today the monument to Sandra Dee was dismantled.
They are digging up graves. Whites and blacks
can no longer be buried side by side. The statue
of Princes Diane in front of Buckingham Palace was
torn down by an enraged mob. “White privilege!”
Go ahead, tear it all down. Malcolm X never liked
Mickey Mouse. Henry Kissinger never bothered
to master English. Why should American children?
Personally, I’m glad 17% of the people are dead.
Next time, they’ll remember not to be born.
Keep them dawwgies rollin’, Rawhide!
David Lohrey is from Memphis. His plays have been produced in Switzerland, Croatia, and Lithuania. His poetry can be found in Otoliths (AUS), Tuck Magazine (UK), Terror House Magazine (Hungary), and The Cardiff Review (Wales). David’s fiction can be read online at Dodging the Rain, Storgy Magazine, and Literally Stories. His newest collection of poetry, Machiavelli’s Backyard, was published by Sudden Denouement Publishers (Houston, 2017). David is also the author of Bluff City, available from Terror House Press. He lives in Tokyo.