Poetry by Damon Hubbs

You pleaded the belly during the feast of flowers to avoid execution.
Aqualung is playing at the Patio del Níspero
when we spot Ponce redrawing the map of Florida on a linen napkin,

the riot and surveillance in the territories have us dressed like Dudus
fleeing Tivoli Gardens. It’s the summer of wigs and frocks and bad men
disguised as girls. Coleridge
                              and the conspirators drink Aztec Gold
and when the mind catches fire the street is littered with dead dogs.
Eight pipes a day and evenings with prostitutes, yaws, malaria

and Guinea worm. Adultery leads to sainthood — or hysteria. Still,
Coleridge brokers a ransom at the cricket field, takes a romp to Cuba,
pink gin at the ReBar. It’s the summer of wigs and frocks and bad men

disguised as girls, and he’s flattering the dynasty at a Jacuzzi party,
losing at kalooki, gossiping about gold and the vestibular aspects
of Monica Bellucci’s coochie
                             it could be worse:
Ponce has an arrow wound on his thigh shaped like a flamingo
and J. tried to kill himself with eyedrops. Is it possible to be assigned

a role in the new regime. O we got the leans, Coleridge.
Don’t you start away uneasy. I am of the tomb and without a handle
on the flung world.