Tonight's Poet Corner: Caught You

Caught You
by Belinda Roddie

Caught you sneaking out back with a
dry ice martini, sucking the
chill out of a sieve and wishing you were
dreaming about orangutans playing ping pong
with the Senate, but the sad thing with that
image is that we're already in it. Saddle

up with your white steed, driving the carriage
to the liquor store where you'll restart your
next sacred marriage with an
Elvis hallucination kept in the
corner of a refrigerator, scheming up
cocktails in a warehouse of machinery.

You'll smoke and drink until you're sick,
coughing up lugnuts until your
axles stop turning and you're too
comatose for mugshots, but the unhinged
smile is a nice touch when your
innards become dismantled, and your
horsepower goes under and your
engine blows to embers. So, yes, I

caught you, and I don't know what to
do with you, and I don't know what to
say to you, except suck on the
curly straw a bit for you and
take away the crunch of a
sardonic hit of spice and sadness
served out by the bartender who's
half boozehound, one hundred
percent dead jalopy.