Dead Cat Bounce
by Damon Hubbs
“Our sunglasses broken like ciao.”
-Bill Knott
Mary Ellen is here, and Sara, and Jane in that Jezebel sweater
that makes her tits look like torpedoes.
Mine are barely hand grenades poof, poof.
Paul is cutting Manchego and talking about the land speed records
at Bonneville Salt Flats. It’s a new obsession.
That and his wife’s psychiatric emergencies. That and lidos
speedos and atomic bombs.
Rick is running late because he saw god
at the stoplight at Eighth and Pine —that’s what Jay is saying, anyhow;
Rick was coming from the gym,
pickleball with the sculptress and her lover,
the one who’s always confusing Catullus and cunnilingus.
Jay stopped at The Spot on the way here
to see that bartender he’s crazy about
and I’m watching the capillaries on his nose
burst like tomatoes at La Tomatina.
“Haven’t felt this good since the divorce,” he says.
“Isn’t she a part-time minister at that New Age church,” Priscilla jokes.
Priscilla paints in circles and loves in triangles
and has always thought of Jay as the one that could have been.
“California dreaming,” he says, sipping, smiling
blessing the vine like Bacchus.
Darcy and her wife Vanessa
can’t make it. Fundraiser, upstate.
On a 600-acre tulip farm owned by Yoko Ono.
The ladder to the ceiling ends with YES.
Does she ask the gardeners to cut off her clothes?
“Step on an image of Christ, or be killed,” Jane says.
O how she left the audience exposed.
“They’re serving sweet cakes to deaf crocodiles,” she adds.
Jane has a habit of coming at you like Judith Beheading Holofernes.
Entry level salt flats racing begins at 130 miles per hour…. Manchego?
“When is Rick going to get here?” Mary Ellen asks
because her and Rick have inside jokes
because her and Rick once drank Peroni together in Zurich
because Rick likes torpedoes
because Rick is fond of entering a room and saying —here’s the gale warning.
Rick is as disaffected as a kitchen sink.
That’s why he’s seeing god at stoplights.
It was probably a cardinal
or a piece of jamón hung on the top
of a long greasy pole.
Sara is marooned on the couch
like a soft sea creature, a Goddard College girl
with Bloomsbury curls
on her phone placing bets with FanDuel.
Picks. Predictions. Analysis.
I think about money moving in codes and symbols
private keys and public ledgers
blocks and bears
will and willingness
dead
cat
bounce.
Jay says Sara is writing a sex diary.
It’s about admiration.
Like Rubens reproducing Titian’s paintings.
He told me this over drinks at the Old Spanish Tavern
when he was crazy about that other bartender,
the one he called Wingfoot Express
because she studied airplanes, wanted to be a mechanic, fix engines.
“You slept with Sara? Hell, I love everybody,” says Jay
and then he leans in and asks the bartender
if she’s interested in having a good, old-fashioned Roman orgy;
irrumators, vibrators, fish, game, a roasted peacock—the works.
Jay’s not very good with his emotions.
When I slept with Sara
she called me the Wife of Bath
and thought it was the funniest thing in the world
like dry humping
or suffocation by rose petals.
“Take their affections
rather than their towns,” and nobody knows
what Mary Ellen is talking about. Scrying, perhaps.
She’s like a unicorn trapped in a 15th century tapestry,
always defending herself: “I wrote a collection called Benito Campari.
It was published by this obscure press in Ontario.”
And what is poetry if not a hunt in an enclosed garden.
Blue Flame was equipped with specially designed tires
pretested to speeds in excess of 800 miles per hour… Manchego?
Rick’s not coming, someone says.
God’s lost pilot, someone says.
Yes, nothing happens. Twice. And Jane is trying to take off her boots.
The phonograph needle laid
low. It happens like this. Then shrieks its plumage
like the war next door.
When the guy buzzes the top floor we buy two 8 balls.
He’s got so many baggies and bindles stuffed inside his coat
he looks like he’s wearing a Life-preserver,
as if the great flood is imminent and he’s prepared
because when the unicorn crosses the stream, god damn it, he’ll be ready.
We smoke delicately rolled cigarettes terrified of Ontario.
BIO: Damon Hubbs is a poet from New England. He's the author of the full-length collection Venus at the Arms Fair (Alien Buddha Press, 2024). He has also published four poetry chapbooks, The Day Sharks Walk on Land, Coin Doors & Empires, Charm of Difference, and The Railroad Poems. His work has recently appeared in Revolution John, BRUISER, Apocalypse Confidential, Farewell Transmission, The Gorko Gazette, and others. Damon's poems have been nominated for the Pushcart and Best of the Net.