Petrushkin!

Ron Charach
From:   Petrushkin!. Ekstasis Editions,1999

We are spinning on a globe, Petrushkin,
where the ultimate Disney set
is Alcatraz Island,
where thirty-nine Heaven's Gate cultists
shed their Earthly containers to hitch a ride
on a spaceship behind the Hale-Bopp comet
to a new home near Sirius.

A cloudy blue globe whose spin no one feels
but melancholics on a switch day
or burned-out manics recalling
the old high-flying ways.

Even you, roynish Petrushkin,
thimble-sized in a pseudo-Russian hat,
white scarf unfurled like angel wings
twirling on the end of my flaky thumb,
swirl an unfamiliar potato smell
with orange and yellow halos around black balls
that lure nerve-doctors to my temporal lobes.
See how they parade in starched white coats
and keep me up all night
and crown my scalp with needles
in the hope of catching a trace of you
bald-faced, wide-eyed,
mid-parody —

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Ron Charach's works copyright © to the author.