JOHNMICHAEL SIMON POETRY

Promenading along above him

skirting bay and beach, click chickens,

short skirts twirling as he sits taking an

ocean breeze, sipping his Margarita

fingering swizzle stick umbrella

a rainbow patterned divertimento.

 

Two laughing senoritas all thighs

and plumpness saunter by and frump

goes his swizzle stick, frump, frump,

wind blown miniskirts that sail and

fall —his flicking fingers groping

for a word —‘Brazil’, ‘Flamenco’,

‘exopthalmic’, frump, frump.

 

And then he has it!  An adolescent

finger licking memory; chickens

under the counter, pale and plucked,

transparent shrink wrap gleaming.

Ah, he remembers, finger spinning

obsessively —they used to call it

‘the parson’s nose’ —and then, as if

on cue, he sneezes, the Margarita

spills and as he dabs his trousers

the waitress arrives watched by a pair

of nuns behind her waiting for a table,

and presents his bill.