She Dances Softly On a Plate of Spaghetti Next to a Piece of Garlic Bread in My Head
I can remember watching her
as she drank what we’d left
of the good wine
She was all Sarah Jessica Parker perfume
and tomorrow night’s nail polish
and I did my best to reason with her
but she was in no mood for not fighting
and fed up with my lack of distance
so it was over even though
I’d just taken my shoes off
she showed me the door
as if it were a fabulous painting
she greatly admired
and though we may not have made it
to dinner I still long for her pasta
and once home while watching
old footage of atomic bomb testings
and their mighty effects upon
things like kneeling school kids
and leaky roofs that aren’t so leaky
anymore because they’re no longer there
I crawl cautiously to the telephone
and order myself a pizza
with extra clouds but no mushrooms
put on the new album by Snowboots
and pretend things had gone differently
like in that one episode of The Twilight Zone
when William Shatner’s sitting in a haunted diner
with his new bride and she asks him
things like “Bread and butter?”
to which he responds “Yes, dear.”
a simple exchange like that right now
would taste almost like heaven
he was the self declared youngest
office manager in America at the time
a lot of people never know that
the kind of guy who knew how to
order a tomato and lettuce sandwich
in public without blushing
and managed to keep his wife
from eventually looking at him
like he was an abandon-able asshole
worth loathing
fiction or no fiction
you’ve got to admire a guy like that
(another one from my book Dusk Hearts Dawn aka Package Gigantis in The Deep Waffle Palace of Love. Baobob Tree Press)
Multiverse Johnson 