The All About Moi Ghazal
Dennis Mahagin

Queasy root beer hue, those irises made an Alabama sky change
all the time. Indiscriminate, but fleeting. Entirely specific. Disloyal.

Rode the carousels of Lake Compounce in a honey bee tube top;
straws in my clutches, but no chutzpah. No brass wedding band.

In '94, was the amusing amnesiac at a family reunion, personas
they poured forth like Sybil in a frothy suit of mail. Amway Noir.

Amygdala, gone serpentine at Shop A Rama, hunting the sure things:
A long cool drink of rain check: she refused to take me mysteriously.

NASA told Interpol, when I inversed premature: "Subject sans clue
what life's about. A cold trout..." I called the antimacassars: d o i l i e s.

A seasickness, rinsing me clean, each foamy footprint coiled as bundles
of barnacle. I stumbles ... stumbled... stumble some more. Out of joy.