David Spicer- Three Poems

David Spicer has had poems in Yellow Mama, Reed Magazine, Slim Volume, The Laughing Dog, In Between Hangovers, The American Poetry Review, Easy Street, Ploughshares, Bad Acid Laboratories, Inc., Dead Snakes,  A Galaxy of Starfish: An Anthology of Modern Surrealism (Salo Press, 2016), and elsewhere. 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.

ANONYMOUS

 

The asphalt seduces me

like a yellow-rosed pillow

from a gifted schmuck: a sexual child

deflecting from self-help prayers, plastique kisses,

and bloated-belly fathers with inept beards,

I leer at the maelstrom, love gunpoint

demonstrations in silk-suit department stores.

I flourish in the streets, an affluent

clone in a white uniform nagging

photographers backstage. I relish

declined interviews, screen opportunities

with a valet’s fingernails. I collect trophies

in my breast pocket, pay the penalty

for the preservation of decline.

Clutch the smog like a quilt

and suffer the penalty of justice,

warning the world of the hallmark I am,

a conspiracy of angels quarreling above.

BEES

 

When my cousin stood on the scaffold

for treason—which he discovered was

against our law—he wore a silk shirt

covered with gunpowder. He neither

vilified nor apologized to the government,

not embarrassing himself. True, he

was a tyrant who hounded his subjects

he called bees, who could be muzzled,

he thought, because they were bees.

Trouble was, he kept a log in his shagreen

notebook of cash he extorted from bees

he conquered. Killing, a sport to this loser,

he quarreled with everyone for a thrill

and forgot that bees have memories,

they are riddles. The spruce gallows

assured us he wouldn’t steal our souls

again, but moments before the executioner

released the trap door, he yelled his last words

with venom: I am witness, you wenches,

I assure you. Chimes will prove all of you stink

of the featherbeds where you make your honey.

And with that, some of us coughed, some

giggled, but with dread in our puzzled eyes.

MY LOVER THE HIT WOMAN                                       

 

A sharpshooter I love aims her weapon,

at the target’s forehead. With silencer

at the end of the muzzle, Chase

sometimes kills the subject—

infant, postal clerk, fireman—from 500

yards. She flirts with failure,

choosing to strike in museums, on busy

beaches, over dinner. Every assassination

is a puzzle, she smirks at me. Many

of my marks were giving speeches, were

under arrest, or attending conventions.

Some of her hits for vengeance,

others from disdain. Chase is a cipher

who seizes upon the element of surprise.

Nobody knows her but me, and I’m

the ally who never betrays her,

despite beatings, floggings, fifty punches

to the gut. I declare supreme loyalty

to my lover the hit woman, I’ll never sell

her out, will lock out suggestions

of satire, libel, anything to expose

or suggest her vulnerability. I’ll fight

for her to stay as remote as a tamarisk

until she accepts an assignment.

Nothing will prevent her success.