Poetry Hi-Fi: Jonah Winter

Goldi-Lox and the Lost Souls

"Hopalong Cassidy barked Brooklynese until his head fell off.
That made the King very angry.
So, all the patients were made to kneel in the hallway
completely naked
while God did his famous Little Richard impersonation
over the P.A. system.
In came the drug-sniffing dogs
who instantly urinated over everything.
In the distance, through the tinted window,
one could see a small boy with red hair
being catapolted over the big buildings.
Flying lessons,
chortled his father.
Meanwhile, a white horse fluent in six languages
seduced a youmg woman in a bar
where she lay nearly unconscious
on the black and white tile floor
in a pool of her own sick
beneath a flashing neon sign
while Johnny Horton crooned
Way Up North in Alaska on the juke-box
over and over thanks to some Paul Bunyon look-alike
who was hogging the pool table
with his girlfriend, whose face he could not stop sucking.
True love, mumbled the old drunk
too fucked up to remember
where it was he made the crucial wrong turn
years and years ago
when the past and the future still cradled the present
like a sleeping infant
precious as lightning.
Someone's been sleeping in my bed
quoth the magician
just before he sawed himself in half.