Whatever You Do To The Least Ghazal, by Dennis Mahagin

"When I coughed I saw fireflies…"

–Denis John­son

Hind­sight is 20. With twen­ty twen­ties, at Hap­py Hour, burning
pin holes in the eye­ball of a dol­lar bill > pyra­mid. In God, whatever.

Luck­i­ly, pimps, repo men and beat cops are not Machiavellian
;oth­er­wise we'd all be in a seri­ous frigging…world. Of whatever.

Those beatif­ic Puget Sound fer­ry boats! Mar­itime parade floats.
Mutant birth­day cakes of buoy­an­cy! Thou­sand points of Whatever.

Gur­gling, pssssssssst! Ahh­h­h­h­hh! goes the youth,
with curl­ing wisps of smoke. Foam, sure. Whatever.

Cajole, via picante and gua­camole. With four-buck Rita pitchers
salt­ing the rim of my ambiva­lence. Skoal. Chin Chin. Whatever.

Hard on a devi­at­ed sep­tum: Scents of eter­nal spring and impending
death com­min­gling like knot­holes and sap. For the rest of whatever.

The Mind / Body Dichoto­my? Appear­ing in a camisole bi-nightly
with dark lip­stick cor­ner of forty sec­ond avenue, and whatever.

From all you've sur­mised, to what you must real­ize, lies
the impos­si­ble ten thou­sand mile fault line, of whatever.

Yet harsh, harsh­er and harshest
still, the Trin­i­ty: Fur­ther; sun; wholly

…what­ev­er.

Den­nis Maha­gin is a writer from the Pacif­ic North­west. He also edits fic­tion and poet­ry for FRiGG Mag­a­zine. Some of his work can be found in lit­er­ary venues such as Exquis­ite Corpse, Sto­ry­glos­sia, Smoke­long Quar­ter­ly, Key­hole, 42opus, 3 A.M., Stir­ring, Thieves Jar­gon, and Under­ground Voic­es.

A print col­lec­tion ("Grand Mal") is com­ing from Rebel Satori Press.