pastry case
the pastry case
is an aquarium of still lifes
where works of pain au chocolat float
alongside those of éclair and chouquette
to begin to make one yours
you don’t need a fishing net
or a seat at Christie’s
or language, even
just stand outside the glass and point
glimpse
the pandemic
had put parades
on pause
yet I happened to glimpse
several red-uniformed
men and women
stepping peppily as one
from the dark mouth of a carwash and into the bright sunshine
while escorting to the curb
a big, dark blue, newly-rinsed Lincoln
that they were drying briskly
with fluttering white handtowels
it was a surreal
5-second slice
of a 4th of July
a mini-reenactment
of something that in no way should have felt historical
it came and went with an eeriness
still…I almost stuck around for the next car
dreamt (#417)
dreamt I was starring in an info-mercial
except on closer examination
it was an in-poem-ercial
instead of selling exercise equipment
to enhance the physique
I was all about the metaphysique
hawking haiku
slinging sonnets
unloading odes
vending villanelles
peddling pantoums
you get the picture
at the end
I rode off into the sunset
on a ghazal
on the wing
it’s asking too much
to be the Yvan Cournoyer
of poems
yet the stick-handling
in gliding the stylus
across the smooth glass of this tablet
allows for dreams
David Lott’s poems have appeared in Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Arlington Literary Journal, Arete, Light, Closed Eye Open, the anthology This is What America Looks Like, and his bilingual collection New to Guayama/Nuevos en Guayama. He is an associate editor at Potomac Review and poetry editor at The Sligo Journal, both sponsored by Montgomery College, where he has taught English language and literature since 1992.
Image: Mudflattop, CC BY 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
