"Like an Empty Restaurant Full of Perfume and Balloons."

Rybicki Evening

Eating salmon with capers, herbed cream cheese

on toasted foccacia bread crested with red wine vinegar

marinated onions on a plate, rimmed in gold

water in a goblet, two forks, a napkin in the lap

then, to the bus station, to find a way back,

traversing the flat, black sea with someone learning to compose music

or so says the idiot’s guide in his hands or the man talking incessantly

about someone’s anger. Looking out the city is dark and wet for this evening

no longer smells like home

the rhythm of the city has changed–

it lassoed lights and smells it found in magazines

made a priority of miscellany or perhaps,

this mediocre nose and eyes have developed with the woman

layered under fleece and her father’s sweatshirt,

plodding along,

lost in a tidal wave of revelations and language

tireless when hunted.

Jennifer Miller McIntyre

A Surrealist Exercise

Stage Left Bank

Seeing elephants made of clay

as you drive to teach youth

can never be a good sign

lights rise

men in distinguished hats rarely dance

Quick

moving boxes filled with spaghetti

curtains part

a woman sings a shrill note that goes from G to E

and back, no Bach, no concerto, just her sliding note

in the key of grass

Applause

Silence

A small dog timidly peeks out

a clay elephant in his mouth

forty-two teeth marks and a missing leg

A small boy runs in

thud of footfall

gives the dog a fedora to wear

placing it between the ears

then screaming one single note

the boy pogo jumps away

The play had never begun

Jennifer Miller McIntyre

Post-Workshop, Third Draft.

Kingdom Come

She wants to be your apocalypse

the one who reins down the worth of you

and judges breath. She wants to be the force

that makes you unable to say no.

All you ever wanted was a yes.

She wants to be the one to forage you in her arms until

the horsemen bow their heads and raise their swords

letting their horns blow their last.

She will drop her wings on your threshold and still ascend.

All you ever wanted was a yes.

The mess of severance will be devastating, but you saw it

coming on the edges of cameras

that caught too much joy

fraud committed with eyes screaming death.

The stark contrast between worship and apathy

became a schism with no hope to bear.

All you ever wanted was a yes.

Wandering along the back of her neck

you witness what was supposed to be.

You both pushed and pulled

dancing as you desecrated each other.

But in the end,

there was no apocalypse.

It was the human condition

marked only by sinful behavior.

Treat her as diphtheria

to your penicillin. Mend her.

Only then will you both be

precise and defined.

All you ever wanted was a yes.

Jennifer Miller McIntyre