Problems at Salisbury Fair

Problems at Salisbury Fair

Playing a gambit
but still playing it straight.
Sent a fluff-girl downstairs
shaking her pompadour.
Silver badged shadow boxing lady cop,
she carries a gun.
She sits at the piano with a song
tight as a nun.
Clicking her flashlight
working old mimeograph.
We face our reflections
in the city of fishbowls.
Smoking with a journalist
over by the window.
Drinking strange mead
hesitates on delivery.
Working underground
flim-flaming in the fog.
Picking minds
for breakfast couplets.
Shakes her Dickinson hair
Strolling by Salisbury Fair.

Crabbed picture reflects
as she inspects herself.
Winter is rugged
on the frail apple-tree.
Wrinkled man in a snow cap
hip shaking
through Spanish Moss.

She quietly turns and runs,
from a silly basement bar.
Too much fun, it was mostly a waste.
Helped her stagger to her trailer
after drinking beer and sniffing paste.
Some of this and a lot of that
she shakes her tits with tats.
Grinning from the stage
with her over sized dentures.
Clicked her door to the night
shutting out new adventures.
Tight lipped little loser
stapling his chapbooks.
Shakes her Dickinson hair
Strolling by Salisbury Fair.

Clicked his flashlight
asked was it him or them.
Saw the bloody handprint
no flatlander expectations.
One gone before she was born
the other never born at all
they only exist because
she remembers them.

He's wound tight
by she who intoxicates.
The stone bag empty,
Sampson follows the thunder.
Press her hands back
she's flat on her back again.
Kiss the space
her face is open wide.
Stars sparkle bittersweet,
dripping from
these bearded lips.
Boss burbled gobbledegook
chewing treacled tobacco.
He feeds on her mind like a vulture
as she cries out jargon.
Shakes her Dickinson hair

Strolling by Salisbury Fair.
-Will Dockery