The noise a pair of high-heeled shoes make
when dancing on the patio. The slow-flapping sound of
uncompressed laughter, weightless. Citronella torches
define the periphery, beyond their flickering watch your step.
Skinny crescent moon above, more decorative
than light-casting. Who controls the scenes we live?
I’ll find out which clowns pull the strings here,
make this joyful milieu possible, then blackmail them
if bribery fails. Hope not to kneecap
the proprietors. I’m asking that it stay evening,
this particular evening, the window book-ended by sleep
and dinner hour. Yes to a bottomless jukebox, like this,
yes to cool-for-August night air,
from now until indefinitely
a leather sole turning on clay tile,
early into afterlife.
TODD MERCER won the first Woodstock Writers Festival’s Flash Fiction contest. His chapbook, Box of Echoes, won the Michigan Writers Cooperative Press contest and his digital chapbook, Life-wish Maintenance, is forthcoming from Right Hand Pointing. Mercer’s poetry and fiction appear in journals such as The Legendary, Main Street Rag Anthologies and theNewer York.
Categories: New Year's resolution, Poetry, Themed
Tags: e-zine, ezine, hyperbole, longing, melancholy, melancholy hyperbole, new, New Year's resolution, Now the Fixer Wants In To Heaven, poem, poet, poetry, poets, submit, Todd Mercer, writing
Melancholy Hyperbole 