More morbid mongrels munching
—John Ashbery
“Who didn’t order a gluten-free bagel?”
The chimp who’d eaten four of them
pretended he couldn’t speak English.
It was late-summer Tucson, exactly
as you’d imagine it. The sky was
overly-blue, and no one was shivering
about it. Our little girl’s tiny claws had
hooked themselves into a banana, each
dad pointing at the other with a full-on
“His fault!” face. Meanwhile on the
Mississippi, the Patron Saint of Gambling’s
smoker’s cough dwindles, only slightly
interrupting the whir and ka-ching of the
long row of slot machines that patrol the river.
