BY BENJAMIN NIESPODZIANY
Paper Latte
The doctor wasn't supposed to
but she prescribed herself
to try new things.
"Something new once a week,
repeat, repeat."
She made her list of firsts well
after a wine-soaked midnight.
Bobsledding led to a broken collar bone.
Swimming with gators later a lost toe nail.
"Repeat, repeat,"
she promised her heart beat
but when she ordered a paper latte
on a Monday morning, and the barista
handed her some brown construction paper dripping
with hot milk, the doctor shouted,
"This is the last straw!"
The barista, in turn, assured the doctor
that plenty of straws are available over by the creamer,
"but straws aren't needed for consuming a paper latte."
Upon hearing the coffee comment, every person
in the cafe, all of them chewing up pages of seasonal paper,
laughed and laughed, gallons of milk splashes
running down their hysterical chins.
It's Just
When the shots began
down the street,
the old man told his shaking
hermit crab named Franklin
to not worry. "It's just
fireworks."
When the blasts
continued right outside
of the old man’s home,
he told the pet, "It's just
a half dozen cars
back firing all at once."
When the bullets ripped
holes through the old man’s front
door and into the window
by where he sat reading
the paper, trying his best,
to maintain tranquility,
he told the crab,
"Pay no mind, it’s just
nothing. It's just
something the city
will clean up
in the morning."
Dressing Groom
He squirmed his own body
into a dress of rotting
peacock feathers
and a pair of dovestained
white gloves.
He placed atop his head
a crown of potato shavings.
"Okay," he whispered
to his lone cracked mirror,
one that never talked back,
"okay," he gulped again
to all of the other
horse tails and ghost scales
surviving off of pheasants
in his crumbling duplex,
"I'm ready for the all."
Exploring Heaven
On my second day of death,
I asked various angels
if all the places in heaven
have been discovered, if any
parts have been left untouched
and still need exploring.
All of the angels willing to listen
laughed at me in a cruel manner, almost
a bit too loudly to have made it up
through the gates to paradise in the first place.
Something felt off.
"Maybe someone is hiding
in an unknown area in heaven," I said,
all the angels and saints
flying away from my dead rambles,
"maybe someone not allowed
through the gates. I bet you
a whole sector of hell exists
up here, and I plan to find it."
You can purchase your own copy of "Dress Code Aquarium" here.
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Benjamin Niespodziany is a librarian at the University of Chicago who runs a multimedia art blog known as neonpajamas. He self-released a chapbook of poems in December known as Dress Code Aquarium and has had work published in The Occulum (forthcoming), tendercactus (forthcoming), tenderness, yea, Water Soup Press, and 1833.fm. Twitter/IG/Facebook/SoundCloud: @neonpajamas