4
The Bride Came D.O.A.
She was born into lobby living,
occupying the largest penthouse,
in the grandest hotel,
on the most elegant boulevard,
in the most sophisticated city,
in the entire world.
She is destined to parachute pure MDMA
on a fabulous California beach
with the Sultan of Brunei, the President of Italy
and the Dali Lama.
With a delicate voice-over fortune,
you loved her the first time you saw her,
snorting China White
at the corner of 18th and nowhere special,
because a vein could simply not be found.
She is the jewel in the center of Kansas City’s forehead.
The fizz in a tall intoxicating Tom Collins.
The summer smells from a vacant lot,
wearing around her a glow, mixing
the ecstasy of loathing and the relief of lunacy.
In comparison, you are as bland as mayonnaise.
Speaking in full sentences to yourself in absentia.
Slow-witted, oblivious to the dark of the moon,
spreading its one good wing at a severe pink distance.
Her walk is theatrical and emerald-green.
So nuanced, you get lost in the flex of her gait.
The mix of perfume and turpentine.
A water-voiced coin in the landscape.
She is the Blanche DuBois of the Great Plains.
The Holly Golightly of Vine Street.
Mrs. Robinson inviting George Bailey over
for tea and cookies and a blow-job.
And of course, there is always the cornholing.
She is hysterical perfection.
A drop of bright blood
encased in immaculate crystal;
battery acid beating
in the heart of a sapphire.
Perfection drawn close,
shinning in the cold.
A boom lowered.
Living theater drawing its final curtain
with the tenderness of a wolf.
Perfection, exercising its tendency to over-reach,
violently exiting the stage long before the 3rd act ends.
Horrible and fascinating.
After her, there will be mornings
when you will wake up so sad,
that even the blooming of 100 popular flowers
will seem like little more
than a test pattern.
David Smith’s latest book, co-authored with Scott Wannberg, is Rocket’s Redglare: the Handsome Duke Deal and Kid Mingo Letters. He is also the author of Closer to Jesus. A limited edition broadside collaboration with visuals by S.A. Griffin of his poem, Genocide Sutra is out by Hanukah. You should buy two or three copies. His next book, White Time, will include the entire collection of the Hotel Malaria galleries. In the 1980’s he was publisher and editor of Ouija Madness Press and Ouija Madness Magazine. He is the ruggedly handsome half of the jazz combo with the immortal and tall S.A. Griffin on the go-man-go crazy strip tease that is Rose of Sharon Press. The best bartender you will ever know, he can pour a Singapore Sling that will make your mother weep with joy.
