King Erasure

At your intervention which was nothing more
                                      than a pageantry of post it notes

stained by a ballpoint’s opium ink
                           dangling on an inch of yellow adhesive

stuck to your armored chest,
                                 you told us what you wanted to be-

a cold steel coffin of pink champagne
                               where a jewelry box gleaming with

dirty needles floated in the hands of ladies
                             in waiting who no longer spread their

legs like wings, sheltering veins of regal blood, as
                      your shimmering crown of aluminum foil

sparkled above a bath towel cape
                                                hailing you King Erasure.

 

 

Commando Ballerina

                                   The need to remember
not to remember   
    swallowing yesterday’s glassy swords 
                       sharpened by trembling hands,


                          by fingertips calloused from
dancing on lighters
                       to the beat of blood beneath these nails                                   
                                 that kept me alive through the night,    


                              is why ten little soldiers in
pink fishnet stockings  
                      salute the light in my eyes,
                                twirling at dawn on the shores

of my face, like commando ballerinas disarmed.

 

by Daniel Edward Moore

Daniel lives in Washington on Whidbey Island. His poems have been in Spoon River Poetry Review, Rattle, Columbia Journal, Western Humanities Review, and others. His poems are forthcoming in West Trade Review, Duende Literary Journal, The Inflectionist Review, Magnolia Review, Isthmus Review, Glass Mountain Magazine, Columbia College Literary Review, January Review, Under a Warm Green Linden, Yemassee and Cumberland River Review. His books, “This New Breed: Gents, Bad Boys and Barbarians” an Anthology, and “Confessions of a Pentecostal Buddhist,” can be found on Amazon. Visit Daniel at DanielEdwardMoore.com.

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