By Mike Beasley
Up stepped she and paid her fee,
Thrusting with studied gravity
Each carping coin into the fare box mouth.
Ignoring other vacant seats,
She chose the one in front of mine,
The back of which I had just claimed
As pillow for my nodding head
Weighed down by what the dramatist had said.
I raised my eyes in time to see
Her human rights bloom flagrantly
Upon her furrowed brow; in time to catch
The cocksure glory of her brimstone stare.
She did not speak, but mildewed perfume,
Powdered skin, befouled circumstance—
And impudence dispatching from her glance—
Slipped by the sentry of my deference,
Through crusts of cultivation, down where
Brooding smiths beat ploughshares into swords.
With my arms unsheathed, I inched an elbow towards
The backbone nexus of her spiny cross,
Prepared to make a spectacle of loss,
Until I caught some lupine, canine thing,
Alert and snarling, getting set to spring
And nip upon the tendons of a sheep
So rudely woken from vexatious sleep.
Undone, I settled back, a muttering wreck,
Mouthing “Excuse Me” to her upbraiding neck.