Suppose we were to go to the middle.
Before the night you packed your things.
In the middle I haven’t quit
so I’m chain smoking in the designated zone
at Six Flags America
on or around my birthday. It’s August,
viscous and hot. Everything clinging
to everything else. Even the birds
scavenging for dropped fries appear to stick
and unstick through the low sky. Happy
birthday to me. There are so many
trash cans here! Yet still so much litter.
You’re standing outside the white painted line
lifting a contraband apple from your bag
looking at me across the boundary.
You know, you tell me, you can’t eat an apple
from the inside out. I ask anyway
if this is where it turned. By where I mean
when. You gaze around at the cartoon town
square—its courthouse, post office, monuments
the bright slanted façades of boardwalk
games, concession stands—and beyond it
to the dim ochre Bowie hills. C’mon,
you say, your grin as always a dangling modifier.
Let's at least get some Dippin’ Dots. Then
as I look away an eyelash—No—
a single goose peels from its V above us, a bead
of syrup dripping from a fat lip, falling,
falling right into the path of some
poor soul riding the now long-
gone roller coaster called Mind Eraser.
FM Stringer is from New Jersey. His poems can be found or are forthcoming in The Penn Review, Missouri Review, North American Review, EPOCH, and elsewhere. He lives in Pennsylvania with his wife and dogs.
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