Karaoke Wasteland

(for Juan Gris)

All they ever talked about was perspective.
Evenings, he crocheted oblong memoranda.
He recalls being given a sandwich gleaming 
with mustard, the slabs of thick, black bread  

like relics from the plague years. He shrank 
before it, terrified. Besides, nobody in this
karaoke wasteland could sing to save their
skin. Mediums fanned out across the grid, 

brows furrowed, desperate for a tablecloth
by an open casement and a plastic hair trap 
to make sense of the sink, yet even with all
of the candles he never once called it a cake. 

Jeffrey Little | (shake the broke light down)
Contents | Mudlark No. 77 (2024)