The Grasp, acrylic on canvas, 70 x 50 cm, c/o Karin Goeppert
KALI IN THE SUBURBS
I adore afternoons that have the feel
of a violent crescendo, building slowly. There’s an
aren’t-we-all-having-fun American tension
in the air so thick one can chop it
with a machete. It’s hot, we’re all eating shrimp.
Florida humidity, mosquitoes feasting, the animal
empire striking back. A fat uncle smoking his Cuban stogie,
and not one bug bothered by its odorous cloud.
Live dangerously is my motto. In this country it’s hard not to.
I love to stumble giddy and half-naked out my lover’s
backdoor, headlights flashing on family portraits and on a
gleaming row of weaponry in its glass-fronted case.
I know you feel uneasy around me. Ever so lightly stressed.
I smell evil the way you smell pheromones…
or the scent of any self-enlarging enterprise…or a whiff of vaporized
weed drifting in from your oldest boy’s
birthday bash. So here I stand in a corner of your living room,
glowing like a pile of toxic debris. Imagine none other than me
at the perfect wedding, posting photos of the ravaged
cake, the drunken groom. You don’t want to know me,
not really, nor yourself, nor how shitfaced that frat boy
son of yours was before taking the Jag
out that evening that ended so badly.
