In GReen Carnations
by
Nicholas Alexander Hayes
Nicholas Alexander Hayes is a Chicago-based writer and educator. He is the author of the collections Lexicartographies (poetry), No Wish Unfulfilled (short fiction), and Ante-Animots: Idioms and Tales (prose poetry).
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from In Green Carnations
What stale musk erodes the perfume of jasmine as Mroz sits
facing an alley constipated with bulging dumpsters
impatiently staring at the orange paper cut of sunset.
In writhing obligate anxiety and flirting with
insensibility, he descends between the tagged walls, craving
adulteration.
A fractured, ersatz Eames chair spills negentropy.
Brothers pick through the piles looking for scrap. Bottoms in
the recycling. Maenads in the grease traps. Bromius looks for
glory holes or rat nests.
Mroz smells Erl, famished, libidinous shadow,
panning the gutter for stray sapphires and tracking scavenging
boys.
Mroz abandons the narrow canals of detritus
distancing himself from fruitful gleaners.
Erl follows him into the empty avenue as two bunnies
chase each other underneath abandoned cars.
Pausing, Mroz whispers, “ Hungry ghost, must I sing
you vespers as I light incense of pubic hair and green
carnations.’
