Whatever happened to Anita, the I-don’t-give-a-fuck libertine? Did the times pass her by or does she this minute secure cramp-ons to her boots & set off across her private lake?

*

I want that leather pillbox hat with the blue beadwork. There, that one.

*

It may just be that What is it you think
will save you? has become meaningless.

*

Time to get dressed! Everyone’s here
for the ceremony, the sculptor you’ve already
judged on no direct evidence whatever
has revealed himself to be (for the moment)
a minister of the Gospel & here you are,
having forgotten how to tie a tie, so a tangle
of ribbed wool bounces against your collarbone
as you pull out the organ bench, step around it,
bend toward the keys & pull the bench against
your knees & sit, eager to play & not be noticed.

*

About halfway down the sinuous, leisurely stretch of redwood-crowded road from the star-shine summit of what turned out to be his final acid trip, he snuck into his sister’s kitchen, cut free a quarter of the chocolate cake on the counter, poured a mug of milk & feasted in the false dawn, air-conditioner blasting, sleep about to bless him as it never would again.

*

Her flailing & groaning, my God. We chortled at our sex-funk, told tales of the fat cat, slept. Now I sit in the silent house, having rebuffed the importuning cat, but not without noting his beauty. The mail has almost certainly arrived.

*

Fear camps in his eyes.

*

In a prosperous town in the Old West
of breakaway furniture & unlabeled
bottles of tea crowding the shelf
behind the bar, her body does
its peristaltic work in the alley,
mountains blue in the hazy distance,
an empty Model A idling alongside
the fresh-sawn facade of a farrier’s.

*

Sobbing, one friend said I’m so glad you exist! & the other said I’m glad you exist, too! both then awash in relief so tidal they hung up after once more professing their permanent love for one another, trust me.

John Repp is a writer, folk photographer, and digital collagist living in Erie, Pennsylvania. His work has appeared in four previous issues of Poetrybay and in twenty collections, most recently Star Shine in the Pines, a chapbook published in Seven Kitchens Press’ Editor’s Series in 2024.