Featured Poems SS 2019
She can’t remember not knowing him,
the chocolate house, the one with the gingkos,
and his flame-haired, Liquid Paper-pale presence.
She counted on them as she counted on wet winter mornings
and lightning bugs on popsicle-flavored summer nights.
He was the steadfast bastard who missed Marty’s make-out party
populated with sure things
just to keep her company when she was scratching her chickenpox,
the bad influence
who procured her inaugural Gauloise,
the confidant who clammed up about her split Levis
despite his God-given gift of gossip.
Years have melted, exams and lovers have been fretted over,
but his exquisitely chosen, obscenity-laden words
were the ones that always soothed her
and made Fanta fly from her nostrils.
And he’s the one she remembers
every May 30
beside the cheap grey gravestone
as her first and only hero.
Adrian Slonaker works as a copywriter and copy editor in St. John’s, Newfoundland, Canada. Adrian’s poetry has appeared in Always Dodging the Rain, Red Fez, Amaryllis, The Remembered Arts Journal, Squawk Back and others.