7 billion

by Sara Fitzpatrick Comito

don’t the gold bars go clank! in the saddle

same as the trust on a horse, when it enters water
well, it must know what it’s capable of! or on the

down-cliff, angled more than one is used to, woo-hoo
echo! must know what it’s doing yippie kai oh!

sometimes it’s important to remember
the country was once mapped by people

who most of all didn’t want to die on the way
makes it a miracle anyone’s here at all.

Fish don’t know they’re one out of 30,000
TBD, not eaten by garr or man. Welcome, little one

stay as long as you can.

Cognitive dissonance

by Sara Fitzpatrick Comito

telephone sounds like ghost chains dragging
the buzzer to the outside a constant nag of
where else you should be

I’m nothing til you look at me
that Morphine refrain
and there’s no one ringing

and someone you really want
knowing they never will
show  – the competition
speak in platitudes like
over Iceland pixy redheads
must ballet in collusion with
something you could never
have any idea about

and how have you been left so alone?
along with the cooking smells
from your what you felt needed
to be done at that time of the night

whatever keeps you from looking
out the window for someone who
will never come. And it makes you want
them more and it makes you want to
put their picture in a cauldron with
something venomous like a smear

of lipstick that once allured, a dragon
if you had one. What can you put batteries
into to do your bidding and what is it
anyway? You want him here you want
him dead. And you’ve never been more turned on.

Night in the tropics

by Sara Fitzpatrick Comito

Powerline horizons
mark a growing distance
from a rising moon,
slack tambourine
for a listless player.

Yellow beacons
of apartment windows
crochet a comic street
noir against a gesso
of date palms.

Dead fronds slap
barkless trunks like rakes,
shaking out the day.

A dog runs toward traffic
and unseen neighbors
all die together.
An extra second
is added to the clock.

High rises spring up
like teeth - as we
finally inhale -
false mountains
and a moon drips
off the page.

Vengeance

by Sara Fitzpatrick Comito

I want you
prostrated
by the damp
in the yard

weeping silently
as my music
seeps out
the window
with the sweat
of my onions.

I want you
to pound
with an
impotent fist
as my glass
goes clink,
so cute
it's impossible.

I want
your tears
as verses
useless
as semen
spent
on grass.