iron man #200

She had a Madonna cut, lace gloves, and 80's blushes
to hide the bruise of her smile. White leather

arm wiping make-up, smeared her shadow
on a fringed sleeve. Her Seventeen magazine, Tiger

Beat blues rolled her eyes at the Chess Club. The
sliver spoon was cold to the touch, even over the

gas stove. The strained sigh unzipped in her mouth,
hoop earrings like antennas, the whispers passed

between tongues and hall lockers.                     When
they found her,                                      no note.

           shower curtain              vinyl dress
           medicine cabinet           in the sink of her stomach.

I wrote her name in the gaps                 between comic book
panels, where the story became imagination, and
imagination became memory, sealed in a plastic bag.



mini-mart hand-grenades

We got keys to the kingdom
from the Handout Twins, behind

the dumpster pouring vodka into
Ocean Spray blood streams. Turkey

Hill logic thinning out a Saturday
night, one plastic contribution after another.

Tina's original sin was discovered to
be not so original, and every Adam with

an Adam's apple is not in love with Eve.
Tony tells you he was named after Toni

Basil and he sings Cindy Lauper with
a five o'clock shadow. The Locust

show is standing room only and
our ears buzz from the cheap booze and

lousy kisser-tongues. Words-we
howl all raspy and wise, nonsense

poetry from the ass-pocket of Michel
Stipe. The noise splits atoms like

infinitives, the two dollar cocktails
spill meaning, sticky to cement. When

Sunday puts a razor in your hand,
we'll laugh about PDA's and mistaken identities.



About the author:
Jim Warner is the author of the poetry collection Too Bad It's Poetry (Paper Kite Press). His poems have appeared in The HazMat Review, mid)rib, Hecale, In The Arms of Words: Poetry for Disaster Relief (Sherman-Asher), and elsewhere. He is the Assistant Director of Graduate Creative Writing Programs at Wilkes University.

© 2009 Word Riot