A
Few Lines from Hell
by Bean Newton
Things don't happen in words,
so we make up ways to say them:
orange flame blue white, bursting
fifty feet high. The helicopter
hovered above a dugout canoe
which was empty but for a Coleman jug.
The legendary hotel rendered, now, a pile
of bricks and rubble. The Funk drives down
purple on the dance flo', thumping boards,
melting wax to cold sweat into the base-
ment. Dutch shoes clomp on the cause-
way. Windmills whish
slow. Showtimes at 8, 6 and 10.
Dystopian nexus of Wagner and Scheherazade,
the violoncello destroying themselves in a puff
of rosin. We latched down the last
of the jet's missile bays, ready for action. Let
the Commies bite our dust. Radioactive
dust burrowing its way into our eggs, milk,
the Post Toasties you feed little billy and suzy
morning after metastisizing morning, aren't you, mom?
We were dogs then, punks tattooed barb-
wire jacknife chain whippers, raw like
dead crow and we laughed the hacking cackle
of sixty butts a day. I knocked the television
off the lip of the building's roof.
Wash your paws; you're going to the dance.
