By M. A. Schaffner
Now, she says, with that little twitch of her hips.
You didn’t want to go there but you did.
It was the Marquesa de Pontejos, not her pug.
Meanwhile, after the Apocalypse, we wait
through plagues of lizards and clinging plastic.
There’s a dust storm on Mars that looks like home.
And where were you when streetlights were dancing
like the stars they always wanted to be?
She asked for your number but you weren’t home.
I have a rendezvous with meth, he writes,
at some reputed Dairy Maid. Ice cream
goes better by the gallon than mere milk.
So here we all are, navel to navel,
yet doomed like French bulldogs never to bear
truth without surgical intervention.
M. A. Schaffner (Issue 7) has had poems published in Shenandoah, Prairie Schooner, Agni, Poetry Ireland, Poetry Wales, and elsewhere. Other writings include the poetry collection The Good Opinion of Squirrels, and the novel War Boys. Schaffner spends most days in Arlington, Virginia or the 19th century.
