Remembering the Time

A sound bellowed out which reminded him of the fall of 1989.

Eighteen, loud heavy metal, pizza delivery job
Lungs full of marijuana and a head full of acid.

He had once gone to a kegger, vomited in a pool.
He met a girl named Michelle and she showed him
the darkness of a nearby apple orchard lined with gargoyles.

A haunted arboreal uterus. It’s growth
rotting under the moon after
the sun’s ripeness.

Michelle peed next to an electric fence.
Gary watched the gargoyles,
their concrete eyes kept vigilant watch over
the dead orchard.
Dying apples slumping to the moist,
tar-like ground.

When the two returned to the party,
black plastic bags, full of dead leaves,
lined the street.
Nature, gasoline, melting plastic
rushed Gary’s nose. They ran towards

the house’s sliding glass doors,
ended up in front of a pool table. A girl with

curly red hair yelled into a microphone,
“Michelle, find the fish.”

Michelle found the fish, asleep, in a side pocket.
It didn’t need water to survive. Just the blue chalk
dusting the billiards room.

Gary wondered if it was the little things in the mind that was caged
in the outer layers of tiresome feelings,

the pressure of a new way of
living life that kept people from smiling.