The time you panhandled for tattoos. The monthly payments for transcendence. All the famous people either waived at or had orgies with. The time you found the burnt wreckage of flaming shoes. Childhood spent tossing pennies behind the Red Dirt Cabaret. The mother who worked as both a nun and a stripper. The medical journal contribution about aspirin as a cure for lovesick penguins. How you were the first to capitalize and conjugate KAPOW. That ability to translate any fairy language into Yiddish. The parakeets which sang duets while you scrambled and re-scrambled the eggs from the plain white chickens you raised. The prize-winning rooster from Borneo.

Mike James makes his home outside Nashville, Tennessee. His fourteen poetry collections include: Parades (Alien Buddha), Jumping Drawbridges in Technicolor (Blue Horse), First-Hand Accounts from Made-Up Places (Stubborn Mule), Crows in the Jukebox (Bottom Dog), My Favorite Houseguest (FutureCycle), and Peddler’s Blues (Main Street Rag.)

Photo by Jairo Alzate on Unsplash

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