poem
Volume 24, Number 2

Nazi Woodstock

Sky’s harbor filled with scoops of silk,
                                                      canary and pistachio and Pepto-Bismol pink.
Children dribble soft-serv down their shirts,
                        pointing sticky fingers at the strolling clowns on stilts.
      Deep-fried cheese curds salt the air.
            A cop eats an elephant ear.
                              His radio squawks for a second
                        as someone keys a button and the bottom
                  drops out of a basket attached to an orange balloon.

A rapist in a chicken costume tumbles out,
                                                      useless silk wings streaming up.
            Hoots issue from the felon’s plastic beak,
            his tongue removed beforehand by a tool
            resembling a sharpened ice cream scoop.

The costume was designed by the Director of Aesthetics
      for the Ministry of Beauty, who resembles Heinrich Himmler.
            Before the Nazi party rose to power, Himmler was a chicken farmer.

      The rapist smacks a large red tarp covering a softball field.
The sound of ice cream melting fills the bleachers
                                                      until someone starts to clap.
Trailing purple fins, a hot pink goldfish plummets toward 3rd base,
                                                      followed by a crimson jellyfish.
All afternoon silk rainbows fall.      It’s true… the fat fall faster.


—Michael Kriesel