BY GENE CASE
Copyright is held by the author.
Everybody’s tired of my bad poetry:
even the baying dogs in their kennels,
even the crocuses in their purple-thumbed rubber.
Desire like pulled taffy wreaks a ribbon of red-
and-white twined candy floss out of what’s wrong with
my soul.
I only have a mouth to stuff sugar into.
And on street corners and in glass doorways I
know tendrils of saltwater taffy, tacky like pine tar,
sticky like sunscreen and sweat,
stretch themselves out of my soul, searching for something
to grasp.
I miss being a child, when want was still sickly-sweet,
toonie-cheap — but even then
insatiable: I fear we always bought in fours.
***
Gene Case is a third-year student at Trinity College in the University of Toronto, studying English and Literature & Critical Theory. Their writing has appeared in Plenitude Magazine, Blank Spaces, Jelly Bucket, and Acta Victoriana. They are from Ottawa, Ontario, by way of Sault Ste. Marie.