ADAM DEUTSCH

Adam Deutsch is an Editor at Cooper Dillon Books. He lives
in San Diego (USA).

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First Shots Flickered in Dark Space

have escalated to an arms race
with the menacing gorillas
of the best years
of lives, during which
profuse mock-treaties in the shape
of five-dollar double-feature
drive-in tickets and large
Mr. Pibbs teetering on console
where drawn up and inked,
have gone on,
done what could be done
behind windows covered
with date-night over clothes.

By now, he annually polishes
a loaded forty-two pound
machine gun that's mounted
to the night stand
but eventually expects,
is pretty positive,
there's got to be a break
and some flood of recovery.

She says that one needs quiet
and closed eyes for peace,
but that's her oldest line
he never falls for, should,

but glosses over with
all brands of attacks, near
missed warning shots
and surrender-decoys,
by never cleaning
his own car floor again,
ashing into the only mug not broken.

They don't kiss much anymore,
but she'll stretch an arm
over his stomach and rest
a closed fist on his rib cage,
he, the lighter sleeper.






No Place To Go

Because any one of these days, he's positive
he'll bite the big one and get ghosted in this world,
and when that happens, he wants to be,
at least, certain of comfort.

They say that once you croak,
they don't let you change your clothes. And that's fine,
so long as when he kicks, it's not in the nibble
of the day he happens to be heading to the shower,
or in a layer of lather, or in the quick allure
transition from towel to boxers.

But the odds are on his side
he'll be in leather house shoes. He'll do
the posthumous stretch
sans business-casual,
cozy, unhurried, and,
aside from the unawareness he's still
dead as ever,
not much different from today.






Horoscope

For today, be informed
to avoid a girl of hung silver loops and rings,
and that leaving your building this morning
was a horrible idea. A rocket-launch
of recent celestial affairs suggests you're on fire, signs
are all burning or melting around you. Your moon
which you had no idea you even had
is over at your cousin's house, has been there
for the last 14 hours and so all windows
are prone to explosion until at least next week.
Mass panic about Mercury
Retrograde, though seemingly less likely planetary
is surely more than paranoid inspiration
based on the neighbor gunning it in reverse
for a spot on the street. There's confusion.
He has a Buick. A shifter that sticks.
In day, notice a weather system manifest
as a cloud portrait of a little black kid
blowing stop signs on one rollerblade.
In the night sky above your block
are constellations of the mythical chick
on a long-board who throttles her foot
to the dark and leaves the sky a three sun
brand of hot.

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