The Innisfree Poetry Journal

www.innisfreepoetry.org

by Colin Dodds

A Mystical Misadventure

But never mind me.

Again, I’m just making the road

that goes to a burst of vomit and shame

into the mystical misadventure

it may very well not be.

The dilapidated lady

to my right is drinking them straight,

tempting her fate, seeking a date.

Waters thicker than tears

drip from her face.

Bartendrix number seven

makes it clear that she’s never

visited this valley of trouble before.

She hums that action and satisfaction

are the meaning of the evening.

But tonight’s not the thing in the movie

and it’s not the thing you heard of.

Compared with the bartendrix, we’re all

sad as a couch in the rain.

Though a whispering there, from whoknows,

says sadness is only a breeze

—and a relief from the heat.

Hell filled

Heaven unbuilt

A scientist came to school and told us

loneliness doesn’t exist,

but money does

Sentenced to a pursuit of happiness

in a world without end

Our questions answered

with mass-produced luxury items—

the cul de sacs said amen

Lutheran, Methodist, Latter-Day Saints

churches wherever state highways crossed

The ghost of God haunted the hills

so heavily

But the orange gas station signs said it best—

there is a Gulf, a Gulf indeed

I borrowed my mother’s car

And flew past the schools and strip malls,

flew past the churches and gas stations

I was a flying object

who aspired to be unidentified