Boy-Sized Cockroach
For Rick.
Dancing Finnish on the frontier, pixie dust scintillating around his body. Cockroach lights up, smokes his cigarette in halos. The fumes linger for a while, gradually turn into a go-go dancer. Cockroach spins her double-time to wisps of oblivion. Members of the living dead exit an all-male strip club with limbs in their mouths, stop for a moment to gape. A large pest swerving its hips is a spectacle. All four zombies drop their meals and follow suit in a fruitless attempt to replicate the Scandinavian spirit. Drunk shuffle. Tom Waits gait, wind milling semaphore to their compatriots – the brain is in there. Falter, spill. Falter, spill at the vermin’s feet. Come on roach, lay something on them before their last breath, arpeggio. Kerplunk goes their soul-searching mission. Cockroach, upon seeing his dirty, flips the collar up on his jean jacket, hightails it along alley of bedbug ridden dreams. He’ll go to the gym or practice kung fu in his underwear on the front lawn. Try as he might, he won’t be able to suppress the fact that his body is a composite of dying protoplasm. Over the past two hours, a cockroach duped a clique of zombies, that’s heyday.
For Rick.
Dancing Finnish on the frontier, pixie dust scintillating around his body. Cockroach lights up, smokes his cigarette in halos. The fumes linger for a while, gradually turn into a go-go dancer. Cockroach spins her double-time to wisps of oblivion. Members of the living dead exit an all-male strip club with limbs in their mouths, stop for a moment to gape. A large pest swerving its hips is a spectacle. All four zombies drop their meals and follow suit in a fruitless attempt to replicate the Scandinavian spirit. Drunk shuffle. Tom Waits gait, wind milling semaphore to their compatriots – the brain is in there. Falter, spill. Falter, spill at the vermin’s feet. Come on roach, lay something on them before their last breath, arpeggio. Kerplunk goes their soul-searching mission. Cockroach, upon seeing his dirty, flips the collar up on his jean jacket, hightails it along alley of bedbug ridden dreams. He’ll go to the gym or practice kung fu in his underwear on the front lawn. Try as he might, he won’t be able to suppress the fact that his body is a composite of dying protoplasm. Over the past two hours, a cockroach duped a clique of zombies, that’s heyday.
Samuel Strathman is a Jewish/Canadian poet, author, educator, and editor at Cypress: A Poetry Journal. Some of his work has appeared or is forthcoming in White Wall Review, Train, Ice Floe Press, NoD Literary Magazine, as well as other magazines and journals. His first chapbook, "In Flocks of Three to Five" will be released later this year by Anstruther Press. He lives in Toronto, Ontario with his two cats, Archie and Chin.