Todd Mercer- A Poem

Don’t Come Knockin’

 

Three’s a crowd, that’s what the sock stretched

over the doorknob means. The pair of us invite you

to take in a movie. At the theater. The multiplex

is running double features. Buck up.

One day you’ll be the happy asshole,

dabbling in procreation, in here coupling,

roomie. I’ll be shut out cold, stuck respecting

the sock semaphore, ambling town to amble,

to kill a few hours, hating on your luck a smidge.

You get mixed feelings, but it’s in the lease:

each lord of the manor-flat, though too strapped

to live alone, may seize what shining moments

he can, save them from untimely interruption.

The sacred law of cotton over brass.

 

TODD MERCER won the Dyer-Ives Kent County Prize for Poetry in 2016 and the Grand Rapids Festival of the Arts Flash Fiction Award in 2015. His digital chapbook, Life-wish Maintenance, appeared at Right Hand Pointing.  Mercer's recent poetry and fiction appear in Bartleby Snopes, Eunoia Review, Literary Orphans and Main Street Rag Anthologies.