Twenty years, twenty long years
I've shared with you and now I am
astonished. Your suggestion?
A gun for protection. Good one!
Place it in the night stand, close at hand.
Next to the rope strangling my vibrator.

Does it hurt?

Sometimes, when I think. Razor blades
slice the time from my watch. Warm
weathered friends gather around my stove
to smell the fumes of apple strudel. They wait
for the crumbling crust to fall as they pretend
to wipe my product from their hands.

Think of me as Mr. Ed.

I broke a leg. Stuff me like Trigger, quick
and easy. A hair behind my ear and sound
is clearly defined. I need my eyes to know
the final scene. This story-book page stuck
between the last two sheets of verse. I'm sleepy
from the singsong rhyme on this broken record.

Skipping past the hopscotch.

I'll take a double, please. Make it two--
in a shattered glass, slightly shaken and
stirred like curiosity. My father and his father too,
they wore a bible-bandage, a tourniquet
that never worked for me. This mind, my head
lags in a place far behind a bed used once.

It's all the whore-moans, I'm sure.

I'm different from the average bear.
Much like a beaver ensnared, one foot
beyond madness I gnaw this chain,
impaired, this wilderness will never
accept me as I am, so will I ever be.
Doctor do little, but please do it right.

Here's the key.
   
 

Karen Herring is a native Texas poet who sometimes writes under the pseudonym K.L. Monahan. She has one book of poetry published and titled Kidnapped. She is working on her next book of poetry for publication in the Spring of 2000. In her spare time she volunteers her editing services at keyword Novel. You will find her performing inside "The Writer's Block" under yet, another name-- NOVL Catch.

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