—ARE YOU HAPPY NOW?

 

 

 

Prick

 

 

This morning a prick 

of primitive dread 

overtakes joy & 

the florid sunrise & 

the brass in pocket & 

the fact that I’m still 

alive somehow & 

so I ride with it, pedaling 

a skeleton bike to nowhere 

while no one notices me, 

not the neighbors or wraiths 

or my parents with their hairy 

knuckles and areolas, so

I peddle faster as the gloom 

spreads and flattens like 

the color of a shiner that 

both wants, and doesn’t want, 

to tell you how it got there