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A Thin Film of Water

His dexterity with wieners was somewhat extraordinary
eliciting a shower of encores from the audience
composed of diaphanous underwear models
who brought him bouquets, boxes of chocolates
proposals of marriage, and one, the daughter
of a chain store magnate, offered him a contract
to star in a movie about bratwurst and pickles,
the German, she assured him, could be dubbed in later

 

Only his wife did not appreciate him
she wanted to intellectualize, discuss Greek mythology
at four in the morning when he wanted only to sleep

 

Shaking her off, he fell into a watery dream he’d
often had before, standing over a pool,
that turned into a hall of mirrors
he flexed himself, struck obscene poses

that leered back at him from every corner, every
angle, now tall, now fat, curved forwards and
backwards, now round, thin, twisted, elongated,
replicating him endlessly in a hundred lurid variations
of frankfurter, knockwurst, braunschweiger, biershinken,
a grinning satire of a scene adapted from somewhere
on the Internet, twisting, dancing in chorus line
replications and clones, a can-canning clown performing
baloney push ups in devilish abandon to the tumult
of delighted feminine applause

 

Nightly crowned monarch of ardor, he regarded
himself, unique, triumphant, desirable

…Narcissus of the delicatessen counter

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© Johnmichael Simon

2013

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