Justin Bigos
A shorn male Medusa,
he sauntered through alleys
swinging time on a chain.
His eyes were frozen mudslides.
His nose a first fight.
Teeth fish-hooked minnows.
Laugh a music box
spilling stolen necklaces.
He once took a woman in $600
worth of lingerie to an abandoned freight car
beside the French Broad River,
his tongue hot ice
on her lavender nipples.
He once resuscitated Zelda Fitzgerald
from her sanctuary of flame
and made her dance, dance,
dance her life away.
He was a time warp,
a switch of the blade, a tear in the denim,
a thirty-one-year-old teenager
in love. He was the unpaid
tour guide of our hearts.
Where has he gone?
To the bottom of Snake Lake,
where Poseidon and St. Patrick
flay themselves in eternal apologia.
We pray for Tim Cook,
for his limbs to break,
for his skull to crack,
for his beloved serpents to feed
on the stony remains of their king. Amen.