David Spicer- Three Poems

AH, MEXICO!

 

We played kalookie until sunup in Juarez

after discarding the slot machines

and eating sliced bananas and strawberries.

The air had thickened, suffocating us

as I ogled my long-legged, big-breasted

partner, Mexico Jones, nicknamed Crocodile

by card sharps frightened of a reputation

for eating men whole and spitting them out

like cherry pits. A Luger stuck in jean-shorts

and a machete hugging her left hip, she

leered at the slimy players that her eyes

sterilized with their hue of glue. Wallets

emptied quicker than an estate sale’s bookcase.

One by one, egos crushed, they crawled

out of the lantern-lit cage, cramped and humped,

slaves of their stiff meat. For some reason burning

Mexico’s comic curiosity, I was immune to the heat

she generated, smelled that cascading black hair

and imagined ripened coconut, touching it

with shipwrecked strokes. I memorized cards

and whistled before she strutted sitting still

to win every hand. One bold blade threatened

to slit our throats before Mexico lugered him

in the heart. That was the final straw: I heard

she married a mark, a sweat-shirted stockbroker

who jogged in the outskirts of Albuquerque. Hah!

THE ABYSS OF HER

 

My mustache a brown horizontal icicle,

I, the optimist, listen to the ripple of this

underground river’s waves, the spruce’s

silence, and rejoice you’ve escaped

the warpaths of your mother’s calumnies.

She denied she was Sioux, preferred

to call herself French as she chased us

around the kitchen table, butcher knife

in each hand. In a buckskin lacrosse

uniform with a purity only you

could muster, you refused to ignore

my proposal, stumbling over the cot

after she struggled to drown you

in the sink. I threw a roundhouse at her

face of hate before she dropped on the dirt

floor, and now we’re together, no longer spied

upon or assaulted with pewter frying pans

and kettles, no longer fearing mental torture.

We’ll guide ourselves to the altar,

offer prayers, me in stolen wingtips,

you in your laced veil, and agree to wrap

the other with a new tapestry. I’ll stroke

your long black hair, you’ll guide us

past this hinterland’s gates, and we’ll

no longer trade slingshots for quill or ribbons

for turtle soup—we’re each other’s relic,

we’ve escaped the abyss of her.

HE NEVER FORGAVE HIS FACE                                               

 

Breton craved a cheeseburger flambé.

I warned him it’d be a mess, an accident

of anarchy waiting to destroy.

He insisted, invited a videographer

to document the event. India Ink, his sister

of cottonsack dresses, screeched, This stunt

belongs in the lexicon of stupidity! She

lit the match, flames flared, enveloping

blindfolded Breton in orange and blue fire.

The cheeseburger dead, Breton almost.

The avant-garde shunned him, his

reputation as a connoisseur of insanity

demolished. Breton existed by an interstate

embankment, created torture tunes for

a speed metal band, Fiberglass Boot

Ditch. He became rich, pursued

fame for years, but he never forgave his

face: children screamed, women

vomited. Finished as a culture soldier,

he knew his failure was fulfilled. One

complaint, he said, pouring India Ink

and me a pitcher of dark ale at Look Then

Leap, his new bar. He wiped the counter.

You and India Ink should have closed me

down. Glaring at him, I yelled, Fuck you,

Breton! Go jump off the bridge. India

Ink and I staggered out, and Breton

followed my advice two hours later.

 

 

David Spicer has had poems accepted by or published in such magazines as Yellow Mama, Reed Magazine, Slim Volume, concis, Jersey Devil Press, The American Poetry Review, New Verse News, Ploughshares, Bad Acid Laboratories, Inc., and in A Galaxy of Starfish: An Anthology of Modern Surrealism (Salo Press, 2016). He has been nominated for a Pushcart, is the author of one full-length collection of poems and four chapbooks, and is the former editor of Raccoon, Outlaw, and Ion Books. He lives in Memphis, Tennessee.