the meat house
is where serial killers
eat lunch, sip soft drinks
scratch notes
when I hit her on the head, it was good
if you believe you’ve lived your life the right way
then you have nothing to fear
& moonlight as electricians
plumbers, clowns, suburban
dads in faded Cancun t-shirts
who make jokes
& answer phones
with a… “yelllllow”
which is also
the color of the meat house
& the dress the little girl is wearing
hand, foot & mouth
trapped in the arch of a tube maze.
The sign says ‘No Shoes.’
I eat, my gut
a garbage disposal
of playfully placed bones
1980s love poem
& the way
the acid kicks
in some
where unexpected
fates conspire, while we
in love & returning video tapes—
Total Video, on the other side
of the Dietz St. parking lot
now a spatial anomaly
of satanic panic & milk carton faces;
didn’t some college girl
get murdered here you say
another late
fee
on our
nasty
the 19th hole
we swing
through the 19th hole
to score some coke
off a guy
whose sunglasses
are stacked like a cash drawer
on his hat brim
underscoring
the fact we’re at a country club
& not Needle Park.
A few rails of the tasting menu
& he’s teeing off
talking approach shots
says a threesome
is a tradition
unlike any other
so I drive
a hand over my crown
skirt the rough
& he, anticipating
the tightly
mown grass
of a fairway
flees
as if a spider
crawled out of a hole.
We take the sunglasses
he left on the bar
& hock them at a pawn shop
for some better blow.
©2022 Damon Hubbs All rights reserved.
Damon Hubbs is interested in leisurely games of tennis & perfectly moist coffee cake. His poems have been published in numerous journals with recent works featured in Otoliths, Synchronized Chaos, Streetcake, Roi Fainéant Press, Don’t Submit!, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Book of Matches, Exist Otherwise & Horror Sleaze Trash. He lives in New England.