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Three Sonnets Inspired By My Reigning Ex

            Warmly dedicated to SMJ

      Three Sonnets Inspired by my
                       Reigning Ex


Part 0
Sitting at the edge of the universe
like a man atop a modern skyscraper
who might look down to see the manic street
full of yellow taxis and distant peers,
the first thing I notice on a backwards
glance is my snake-skin mortality
shed and skipping across the flattened ether,
a luminous orb on a linear course
like a puddle-hopping pebble, eager
to sink a lily-pad a child targets
for the hell of it.  I realize then - either
I’m dead as a god should be, or just a pet
project of a German ghost, his meager
objective merely my way to forget.


Part I
Before you bed me, I assume the herpes
risk you ignored so many turn-style clicks
so many thick-like quick-strike Rolodex entries
not so long ago made that cavalry slicks
and right-swept Tinder mounts dutifully
saddled have begun their bountiful itch.
A testament, truly, of how beautifully
done was every each one, each surgical stitch
precisely sewn to salvage squeeze-box juice
of battle-field strewn, the red zest of life
a dead soldier blew, is once more, for you,
stalling to flow; knowing your rusty knife
has yet to slice temptation sterilized;
knowing your scalpel’s cut keeps cancer canonized.


Part II
All around you, this kelp-wall compartment 
appears an ocean bloomed with room enough 
for early light to shuffle halfway bent,
like time’s unpolished hedge, across the rough
field where too young have men gone to die.
Someone is responsible for all of it:
The ghostlike fish who grimly swim upstream;
the crunchy autumn leaves all creased and clustered;
and this, the box you loathe in sleepless dream
of birthday cakes and candles your grandfather 
fed the wish-away lawn using mustered
strength from tears his daughter leaked, sprung to lie,
who now only cries at her daughter’s grave,
complaining of stubble when Pawpaw shaves.

Copyright © Phillip Garcia | Year Posted 2019

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