--- C O L E T T E   D E D O N A T O

We were so ugly in our Sarasota sadness,
burned out like suburban kids' minds, wasted on 
shampoo and conditioner and
cable-TV paranoia sunrise.              
We had no there to go to in our big, broke-down blue-car inertia.

We were like seaweed washed-up on the side of a kidney-shaped
swimming pool.

In our hungrier moments, when coincidence looks like chocolate,
we were seduced by the sandy waters that washed and fed
our sun-browned skins as children.

We'd spend the whole day watching Moe Paler and his big-wheelie ego
try to make the sky turn backwards, uploading his articulations.

But today it's Tequiza and A/C by the multiplex,
surrounded by moms whose fourth marriages
and stale, chlorinated hearts keep time
with the sequestered wisdom of FM radio.

Earlier this week, I took a walk on the shoulder of the afterlife's
straight, long highway. There were a lot of junked-up dreamers
waiting outside gas stations along the way.

A dollar in the vending machine doesn't mean you get
your m&ms or your wish. Sometimes you have to kick it.

But I've got better things to imagine than that.

Another year of probation and the whole thrash-core
strip-mall universe is mine again,
minus the job at Appliance World.

I'd tell you more, but there are certain tropes I can do without.