Price and Variety
A Poem
Sling song sip at the Kokanee, Moosehead convulsion, an empty mouth shoved quick with smoke, no one has matches
fire licks outside of orange brown grate, slow chimney in the crowded fence, area with bricks and bricks
and when you look at the house there’s yellow bricks, big presence, yes, personalities expansive here
barely kept in pressure-treated stained Sedona red, and conversation yields other criminals
other long loudness berating neighbours, except the ones who’ve come by with their own favourite cold in hand
and the commercialism that goes towards this — barely functioning adults — a twist in the variety to make the faces change
anger threatens fragile peace, laid up in the head but so easily annoyed, another bike arrives
thrown over the lawn like it belongs there, can’t make it into the porch, poor Parkinson’s
and the rivaling stories of wealth and death, so much dying happened before we mouthed it in the dark
in rhythm, with wallets emptied now, and the price paid the day after.
© J.D. Harms 2021
