Aidan Rooney-Cespedes
Skunk
1)
Two nights ago I crossed a skunk,
suburbia’s disaffected punk,
lumbering off beneath a bush.
All I could do, of course, was wish
he’d wish me well, pass on, and think
quietly how much my life must stink
this lamp-lit, weed-spiced night. My tank-
top’s soaked, I suck wind like a fish;
tonight’s
too close a night for pulling rank
on dudes like me, barely fit to crank
it home to air-conditioned house,
wrap-round deck and satellite dish.
I’d all my lucky stars to thank
two nights ago.
2)
Tonight, less so. Once more, I’ve drunk
my prophylactic dose of plonk
with supper, enough to polish
off a ripe, blue, denigrated cheese,
beget the now familiar funk
that sends me off around the block.
I’m out for a run again, sunk
in idle dreams. Not that I’d wish
to, nights
like this, run some place else, relinq-
uish these fumes that suddenly rank
my dark with his. Like a dervish,
I swerve off-road, his bitterness
the pause to think that life off-sync
two nights ago,
tonight, less so.
Page(s) 26-27
magazine list
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- 14
- Acumen
- Agenda
- Ambit
- Angel Exhaust
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- Atlas
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- Cannon's Mouth, The
- Chroma
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- Lamport Court
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- Matter
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- Monkey Kettle
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- Painted, spoken
- Paper, The
- Pen Pusher Magazine
- Poetry Cornwall
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- Poetry London (1951)
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- Poetry Salzburg Review
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- Private Tutor
- Purple Patch
- Quarto
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- Review, The
- Rialto, The
- Second Aeon
- Seventh Quarry, The
- Shearsman
- Smiths Knoll
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- South
- Staple
- Strange Faeces
- Tabla Book of New Verse, The
- Thumbscrew
- Tolling Elves
- Ugly Tree, The
- Weyfarers
- Wolf, The
- Yellow Crane, The