Jessup had decided that old Beanie and Cecil cartoons
and Mac and cheese were the best that Saturday night
could offer him.
Twenty years ago, he was engaged and riding on a bus
to Houston. He was seduced by a woman whose first glance at him
danced behind the society page in the Memphis Business Journal.
He got off the bus with her in Memphis and stayed
with her in an apartment on Monroe Avenue.
After several sessions of Carpet bunching lust
Things went from alluring to annoying and the faded violet walls drove him out in to the street to one serendipitous job after another.
It all went wrong at a purple tinted table
one night in a bar .
One drink too many and one punch too many
and one cop too many.
After two years in the Tennessee State prison
Jessup had decided he didn’t even like the south.
This was where he had landed
handed over to afternoons of gestapo politeness
dribbled over lips serviced to blistered tips
behind gypsum walls.
Jessup’s neighbor was lascivious
emmitting animal noises from her athletic couplings
breaking furniture in loveless painful joy.
This followed by the serpent’s kiss goodbye.
In his kitchenette he’d bet on the wet dramas
and through cavernous reasoning see himself as some part in these
two act plays.
In evenings he was a leaden gargoyle
Staring at hundreds of channels
of a highly defined abyss.
The penitent wind apologized
for the whispered lies he inhaled
blowing through an open window
shuffling time magazines
like a Vegas poker dealer.
Joshua Kight
September 23, 2007