the INLAID EAR

Indeed, we found rat turds in the kitchen. Mickey and Minnie hosted a soiree. We killed ten in May; they were back by June while the Mars Café sold a hundred trays of fries each day, cleansed in canola oil. Just down from Journey Into Inner Space was our rat hole, a door nobody saw. We cussed in under-park tunnels, made days magic for marks as un-mustachioed, supporting-cast. We’d sneak oral and waltz to get paid, shuck the shit-suits and go home. Some artist in the sixties drew them all shooting up, fighting, pimping and whoring. I Xeroxed it and papered my wall. We would get baked and hysterical: Daisies spread for Goofies, Donalds counted the bills, Plutos lifted their legs in wet salute. "Mask" by Arthur Gonzalez

  The library     for Marna Scooter Cascadia and John Fox John and I ordered two slices and a raspberry soda each. We ate and took turns reciting snips and strophes within easy reach, chuckling, focusing or sighing to fit the words, until our speech joined together at Innisfree. We chanted that secluded beach into being. John beamishly coaxed in Yeats’ cat, Minnaloushe, who puzzled the moon, far and wee— and so we came upon Cummings hiccupping that typography over our paper plates and crumbs. We stood up. It was time to teach of what had passed and what would come, how poems make a honeycomb.

photos by Dennis Tyler, GIFs by Ernesto Ornelas