Читать книгу Bad Ideas - Michael V. Smith - Страница 8
ОглавлениеPrayer for Irony
After his wife left him for a juggler
they met in the supermarket—a tall
reedy man with fingers too fine
for his short, plump torso—the artist
did what he’d always wanted and
bought a young terrier at the pound.
He named it Irony, a cleverness
in the face of grief, because wasn’t it
he that suggested they invite his future
cuckold, the juggler, for coffee?
Around the house the dog pissed
everywhere paper hadn’t been laid,
making damp the hall closet, the sofa
and bed. Irony was a model pup
when the artist was free and the holiest
hell at deadlines. If the man had baggies
the shit was diarrhetic. Each evening
the artist cried, the puppy padded
across the room and slept. When, after
weeks of being single, the artist said yes
to an invitation to picnic in the park
with that intern who held the elevator
on occasion just for him, of course
he brought Irony who vomited
grass on the girl’s light blue Mary Janes.
Finally, the artist thought himself savvy
to rename the beast Happy. All day
the terrier bawled for the moon in
his small, convincing yowl until
the sun rose on the seventh day
and the man tried again with Lucky.
By noon, a transport had flattened fur
to grille, the nimble way a round dull
period at the end of a sentence
can render a trumped-up thought
finite.
