Patience is deviant so
she taps her foot soft
Keeping time to a Billy
Strayhorn masterpiece, anxious
She jitterbugs
Aside this handsome, no,
gorgeous young boy
Whose pensive eye
saunters as Johnny Hodges
Wails saxophone
Over resilient crowds
who violently kill time,
Never inhaling
cigarettes, pray to forget
Pyrrhic mating
Rituals they deny.
Compressed ruby lips
Compel boys, green
experienced, taunt old men,
Green from envy,
Who square dance
ballerinas as
Narcotic lotus blossoms
bloom.
Justin Kempf has just moved with his wife to
Cincinnati from Indianapolis. He works in sales.