Future Dusk
By E. Friedlander
Has anyone every told you they’re sick of hearing you wish impossible things
you three sisters no longer clad in mod madcap paisley daytripper mini shifts
onto 21st century ankle length billowing red robes & white winged bonnets
umbrellas impaling your right breasts
weapons as you run cross artificial turf holding eggs in spoons
racing to the finish line
jigging & jagging to avoid fopdoodle dudes dressed in red & green
their hands in latex gloves
right gripping machetes
left grasping shot glasses & lit cigarettes
their sharp-shouldered suit jackets splitting unripe persimmons
men with thin pursed lips & strawberry-blond pompadovers & orange-tinged skin
where boys whisper of secret passions
for melamine cups & saucers of the sixties
stacked on bedroom dark wood book shelves
in place of banned books
whose ashes are carried away by hurricane storm surges
where ladies keep men who are pills in their mouths
paranoid men slouching in garish shit rooms with gilded columns & grand chandeliers
& pictures of ladies from back in the days of stiletto heels & body-hugging dresses
where men wait & listen for your final sounds
men who think you are blue death-feigning beetles on benzos
men who babble
no
blubber
no
stew
on their lucid cerulean dreams
of strange days straying through funeral parties
spraying water guns from balconies
at Russian blue cats with bottle-green eyes & dense gray coats
shouting neighborly advice about bird-catcher brutes
imprisoning ingénues with chains of hydrangeas
the crackpot crow girls with king mackerel bones
the concubine hens of bubble blowing roosters
& so
has anyone told you there’d be future dusk days & nights like these?
Bio
E. Friedlander graduated from University of California San Diego with a BA in Literature/Writing. Some Saturdays she leads a writing-from-prompt group via Zoom.