Kirby Wright

Wife and I went different directions under the same roof. She stayed home to baby her housebound syndrome. I slept off oysters back at the office. I remember vacationing on twin beds. After a seven-year drought, I genuflect at our old waterbed, pray for sex in Heaven.

Ever do a mannequin? Greek statue? Blowup doll?

Now is as true as oranges. Morning hands the ball off to afternoon. Afternoon runs interference. The Matterhorn glows in the distance. Squirrels scale the roof and slip on my oily shingles.

A jet moves as if pulled by a string, silver echoing gun.

Wife wears costumes—mascara, blonde wig, black dress—anything for young. I exercise my heart with extra large coffee. Minutes tangle up in hours. Freedom means fleeing the mall and speeding out of Catholic parking lots.

In retirement, participants grow. The sun burns cold pleasure, poaches optimism out of the groves. Passing trains play the harmonica. The phone rings once, twice. Wife consoles our twice-divorced daughter. Bulldozers cook the raw earth beyond the asphalt.

Bikini girls stroll the tv. I rub old trophies, remember kissing under the bleachers. These days, everything stings.

Never throw a turtle into a chlorinated pool. I saw a seagull with green feathers perched on a fountain. I live in nightmares imagining, projecting alohas on flat horizons.

Gays play straights at the community theater, flaunt youth at the senile audience. A bald man guzzles Jack Daniels from one-shot bottles. The curtain closes. Bravo, bravo, excellent performances! Backstage girls chase one another with rolled-up towels.

After exits and bottles, wrinkled bodies patch up holes.

Kirby Wright teaches English Comp at the Art Institute of California and serving as an advisor at National University's Writing Center. He is a past recipient of the Anne Fields Prize, the Academy of American Poets Award, the Browning Society Award for Dramatic Monologue and an Arts Council Silicon Valley Fellowship in Poetry. He wishes to thank Jerome Rothenberg for inspiring him to write prose poetry.
 
 
 
 

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