Arsenic Lobster
poetry journal |
Issue Twenty-one Winter 2009 |
Thrift John Thomas The fluorescent bulb was invented to impose a speed limit on the soul. Buzzkill slurped through a glass straw, then sealed at both ends and fed to the grid. They depend over the aisles, wearing out the denim and polyester with radioactive light, baking DMV déjà vu and church basement hallucinations into the bargain hunters below. And the entire city is a size large or larger. Tears in the fabric, buttons that have walked out on the rest of the family. The unaccountable stains. Half a dozen languages converging on the kitchen wares, but unity is hard to come by when rummaging through someone else’s trash. Still we persist because not having a match can be embarrassing when company comes over. College students seizing upon tacky lamps and highly flammable furniture, anything minted in the 70s. All that misguided energy become commodity, prized for its failure. Like the larger than large woman joysticking her electric cart by the troughs of records in mildewed sleeves. Her condition makes everyone else’s less so. This is the encouragement we need to strain the last nubbin of value out of the tube. When we’ll be ready to exchange what isn’t there for what will do. |
About John Thomas |