Festive

… jug, jug, jug …
John Skelton

What love is this drunk and misshapen and bullying, menace in
its loud visceral surge. I wish I’d enlisted as witness elsewhere.
So the hulking man tugs the co-ed by the waistband of her shorts,
and hangs her from his wrist like later meat. What love is this
in yellow and black uniform the bee-hive stirs. What love is this
that loiters on the hair-trigger and spits into the bull’s eye.
‘What the fuck you lookin’ at?’ What love is this that forms
into three unsteady angels holding hands in jean-shorts
and halters, floating down the alley where dumpsters reek.
What love smoothes her skirt and skips and smoothes some
more her hands like sparrow wings upon her ass. What love is
this that needs the Black & White to ferry home at 3:36 on a
scalded afternoon in early fall. And where is home anyway
and why did you leave for this occasion taking with you
only the essential right to vomit in the square. What love is this
that seems to shade the lithe red-head as she is tentative in
passing and I am tentative on her behalf. I see her go alone.
Someone won one golden high-stakes game today. This great day.
Victorious were the good and glory their reward. So adjust
your figs, remove your shirt to put it on your nickel skull
and wobbly nab a smoke at curbside but know a detailed list
of casual harassments somewhere boils above the cost of every
glass you broke. What love is this, subterranean and thereby lost,
ugly shaved head looking in at all that loud aggressive joy,
that strains against its festive irons to be invited in.