A door in a room half ajar
I found the format of his presentation difficult to understand. There were too many sparks of light flailing against the lantern sky, pretending so hard to be the firmament, too many ink blots to fondle.
Everyone huddled together in corner rooms to find themselves in mirrors so conveniently placed in the ribs of each other. I squinted hard at that light against my chest. And those rooms were so small.
I had to step away from the interior of Sammie's Toyota, it was giving me a migraine. The sky fell on me in brief pools of light. I'd rather smoke outside. I took the upholstery with me.
At the dance, I gyrate with the upholstery. I juggle the disco balls on a floor made from Sammie's Toyota, and each ray of light places pins in my pores. I look for allies.
There was nothing I couldn't do after I took the Ken doll back to his bedroom. The bedroom's walls expanded, the sky snuck in through the window. The afterlife is the Ken doll, back up and palms down shifting an iron grill stomach. The afterlife is short.
Dancing the Vandercook
I could stitch my name into your letterpressed eyes
I could take this table and cover it in ink
the color of your retired jersey drifting to the ground in reds
I found you standing on an open-mouthed face in the feathers of an old cockfight
your skin dripping the e-waste remains of my old computer
What was it you said when we first met? Your lips departed in a speech balloon
and all I remember was the exclamation point how I wanted to lick it, feel that lead protrusion against
my face, your machine
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John Bonanni lives on Cape Cod. He is the recipient of a scholarship fron the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown and a residency from AS220 in Providence, RI. His work has appeared in Verse, Assaracus, monkeybicycle, and Hayden's Ferry Review, among others