Flat Water Prayer

by TM Göttl

Coliseum dog fights
marked up the bank vault doors,
while gray-templed men, wearing
expensive wrist-watches,
stirred their coffee with silver barreled guns,
whispering through grated windows.

We escaped
across flat water borders,
passports and nicotine in our pockets.
But I watched my last prayer,
limping to the east,
weighted down by glass antennae
and polystyrene wings.

Summer spells never answer
with open grand ballrooms
and naked tables,
making room for halogen bulbs,
caught, in thorns and burning shrubs
like a multicolored spider
collapsing at dawn.

I could hear the overseer,
His voices of London glass,
above His Times Square eyes,
above his feet, the glittering wrecking balls
walking through Dresden markets.

What hopeless sigh can rise
more than crusty dial tones creeping up the stairwells,
especially under my
frantical embellishment, gluing on every feather,
every pretty bit of tinfoil
riding by on fate and a
plagiaristic breeze?

And who are the eleventh-hour sponsors,
bearing my paper airplane testament on their backs?
A pair of white foxes, flying,
tails afire, flanking a snapped quarter-star,
guarding hostages
and the tiny alloyed messengers,
who climb to the ends
of the elephant grass,
velvet and silken bags
tied to their limbs,
but they climb, my friend.
Still, they climb.


*TM Göttl lives in Cleveland, OH. Check her out at:
http://www.buffalozef.net/

...and be sure to check out this site too:
http://www.eveningforchuck.com/