Popsicle Sticks

Poetry by Forrest Rapier

Tonight, carjackers will lift my forward-thinking

Opus magnum from the trunk of my pickup

And toss that junk out back. My work

Lives in the bins by the curb. I am a vessel for junk

To possess; I am a locket on the neck of a

Countess at a ball in the dark and wintry past

Where virgin soldiers sashay with bearded

Confidence, leading ladies with their arms

For hours until a cock moans it’s nearly dawn.

Freeze Tag is a game I played with my pops.

When we were living in Greenwich, he left me

In the frozen aisle next to Oh Fudge! Bars

In the Chance Mart and caught a bus to Baja

California. Since then, I learned to live in subzero

Conditions like a meal kit behind glass doors.

I live where people come to visit; they snap

A pic of a dead-solid, blockhead caveman

And roast me with a caption on HekRok.

I live in the ice chest like Nordic hikers who lost

Their balance and fell or fell asleep

Beneath a waterfall wallback they thought would

Hold, but cracked and buried them so now

They’re stuck inside a crystal cave of solid water.

My beard is like a husky puppy: dripping

For attention from passersby who simply want

To pay and leave and beat traffic and eat

Orange-flavored popsicles as they watch people

Cheat on each other on Dancing Island.

BIO: Forrest Rapier is currently the Art Editor for Southeast Review. His debut poetry collection, As the Den Burns, was published by Texas Review Press in 2022. Recently, he served as the writer-in-residence for the Jean-Michel Basquiat: Selected Works, 1978-1988, major exhibition at The Bonnier Gallery in Miami, Florida.