The Need to Explain
Before heading to the gym,
my wife—unencumbered by her
handbag— walks to the laundry slash
mail room where a chiropractor’s
flyer announces a new technique
to eliminate pain with magnets
and a copper band.
A Realtor’s postcard says
she’s just sold 1309—
the woman who walks outside
in her pajamas each evening—
at a higher-than-average sum.
A Watchtower
warns The End is Near.
1208 comes out car keys in hand,
sees me holding Marie’s bag.
By the straps.
I just watched a YouTube video, I tell him,
about the Mimic Octopus,
a creature that can make itself
look like a sea snake.
Very venomous.
Frenzy
You put one foot in front of the other.
That’s all there is to it.
You pick up the plate, turn on the hot water
in the sink, and wash it.
Then you dry it with a towel draped halfway
over the counter.
Then you put the plate on top of another plate
that looks just like it in the cupboard.
That’s it.
That’s all there is to it.
Maybe your nose itches.
You scratch it.
You don’t even think about it.
Whatever’s on the news drones in the background.
Who knows what it’s saying?
It could be anything.
Maybe something about medicine.
Maybe you don’t need that kind of medicine.
Who knows?
You walk to the couch and sit on it.
Everything looks the same.
Everything except her robe.
Radioactive Girl
So I picked up a girl with green eyes and blue bandana.
“Violet.”
She slid into my car like it was a playground.
She needed money. Side-effect of violence.
Something pornographic. Whiff of danger.
Cameo of dirty saint.
I called her radioactive girl. She called me Mr. H.
She was a lost card
from a Tarot deck.
My roommate smirked when I brought her home.
Took her in my room.
Frank put on a bootleg of Jim Morrison
jamming with Janis Joplin,
Morrison: Fuck her in the ass!
Violet showed me tattoos of angels
and the date her twin sister overdosed on heroin.
Sarah on her wrist.
Afterward, I took her back
to the street corner like a broken toaster.
She looked at me like the whole world did something wrong.
Like the warranty on God expired.
Lenny DellaRocca is the founder and co-publisher of South Florida Poetry Journal-SoFloPoJo. His most recent collection of poems is Festival of Dangerous Ideas (Unsolicited Press). His chapbook, Things I See in the Fire, won the 2017 Yellow Jacket Press Chapbook contest. He lives in Delray Beach, FL.