LANDON GODFREY
Boa
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Like a benevolent queen, the armoire loves all her inhabitants. So when a shoplifted pair of grey trousers starts to boast and question the street cred of other clothing bought with money earned by labor, counted by accountants, and remunerated by management, the armoire reminds everyone that there’s no telling what whim of a cruel fashion designer’s about to rule the world. I know a pink feather boa that could tell you some weep-sad stories. Put it this way: one minute you’re drinking Manhattans and talking to Warhol, the next you’re hoping to be anywhere but a thrift store on October 31st about to be laughed at and stained with fake blood.
Fox
Like all foxes before him, every morning the fox shows his teeth and practices his death-speech: I long to take you under a bush, where we can talk about the moon and candies we’ve never tasted and theories of adoration while a cool breeze tickles our buttocks, and all the universe sings to us and only us for one exquisite moment its tender song of lust and grief, foretelling my mouth around your neck and your panic followed by surrender, significant only to you, yet know this: you will give sustenance to a world of maggots and small things of a scope and variety you cannot even imagine, a universe of lights as bright as our own despite its absence of laureates to praise the necessary industry of dismantling the world’s bodies quitted by souls on their way to new surroundings, but, like all foxes before him, the fox never gets the chance to charm any victims because surprise remains his weapon and not eloquence, so for maximum symbolic effect and some panache in, let’s face it, an otherwise bloodscrabble world, the fox brandishes that delicious bushy red tail, a flame scintillating for a split second in our long dark.
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LANDON GODFREY is the author of Second-Skin Rhinestone-Spangled Nude Soufflé Chiffon Gown (Cider Press Review, 2011), selected by David St. John for the Cider Press Book Award, and two chapbooks, "In the Stone" (RAPG-funded, 2013) and "Spaceship" (Somnambulist Tango Press, 2014). Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Copper Nickel, Slice, Bombay Gin, The Collagist, Broadsided, Best New Poets, Verse Daily, and other places. Also an artist, she is co-editor, -publisher, and -designer of the letterpress broadside journal Croquet.
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