like a late summer bee diving into a bowl of pollen
He’s outside smoking beyond the thin
curtain
framing him, bridal, in the gauze of just-before-night
ecstatic blue, blazing almost neon
before thundering into black
lit ends of cigarettes as lighthouse
beacons beckoning, warning
those are scuttling, tearing rocks
His mouth is full of them
a graveyard of
stumbling blocks
a velvet viper poised and coiled
In the coals of his nicotine fired
chest there is diamond dust
that glitters up into his eyes
when he holds something, tightly,
that should not be held
and takes whatever he can get
His hands on
leaving skin flush-painted
off-brand signs
on a hasty carnival ride
Elizabeth Beck is an island writer who likes to share scratched-out and blacked-over words. A deep love for the South Sound Region is only exceeded by her passion to expose the immense talent found there. Her poetry and short stories have been featured at WRIST Magazine, Underneath the Juniper Tree, The Laureate Listening Project, The Washington State and Gig Harbor History Museums, TAM, The Washington State Department of Commerce, and glimpsed floating down storm drains. Hold her work up to the light at americanogig.wix.com/elizabethbeck.
