Deux grand’mere son le bus

We got off by the drawbridge

The kid is somewhere along the way in a tan blazer older than he is

The rest of our legs dangle over the edge

Hippos do their tip-toe thing under there

Eliana brought up the hippos as a sort of metaphor for my new hat

Salomé’s ex-boyfriend is a pastry chef

He started yesterday and has already got fondant theory mastered

Will you open this bottle? I ask Salomé on one knee

It cracks on the stone riverbank and pinks the bread and cheese

Still the base lands upright, leaving two glasses worth

We drink from the moving lip, cutting ours silly

Her top one is flat and drips warm now with the mess

Eliana leaps onto a boat looking for her Ethan

Salomé tells me about the time she brought strawberries into bed

How this is nothing like this, how we shouldn’t trust the poets

Charles Barkley

Charles Barkley is in the water

Breaking up made things

Both better and worse

The bird painting is growing

Frustrating seems a questionable image

For a puzzle

Are there puzzles with no images on them?

Correct edges together and it’ll be air conditioning season soon

I’ve never written a poem in the warm before

Rain isn’t worth its salt, didn’t do anything for my warts

Leave it all behind and just start masturbating for a living

Maybe that’s why I’m only allowed pretend cats

The best states don’t like Charles Barkley

I really really like Charles Barkley

Bowleggedness has brought me much joy

How nightmarish things are in Memphis

One time Charles Barkley needed to be in Paris right away

London was in a hailstorm, no planes could fly,

So he leapt olympic into the ground

____________________

Arel Wiederholt Kassar writes disproportionately about poultry. He’s from San Francisco.