13 November 2005 | Vol. 5, No. 3
In Toto
| Armistice: | I paid for the canopy. You paid for the rubberized pizza. |
| Baseline: | Fecund and flippant for sonar, my convalescent lips laced you. |
| Casual: | in salamander chaps. |
| Darling: | It was normal man whooping. |
| Eager: | Before the knot was tied the ante war chest broke. (Clack-clack.) Soon you spooned for bees for alphabets and even commas for retirement. |
| Fragile X: | It's hellish, you said. |
| Gullible: | I asked: Like anesthesia? |
| How: | You asked: Where is our canopy? |
| Isotope: | After many dinners in solitary rooms we agreed. |
| Je ne sais quoi: | Hoop earrings. |
| Kinky: | I said: You're a yurt. |
| Logogriph: | Each new day planned another. It was always a cool evening, bones brittle as toothpicks. |
| Monster Mash: | I wore camouflage knickers. You grew rubus parviflorus in front of mirrors. |
| Neither: | [Remembering] we broke into the lookout tower in South Point Park not to watch the lights of the cruise ships pass in the night. |
| Ooops: | It's like fucking glue, you said. |
| Party Pooper: | Are you listening? I'm speaking to you. It's me beneath your shoe. This event will end with one of us on his knees and the other one curtsying. |
| Quickly: | You said: Snap my bones. |
| Rorschach test: | If you were me and I were you, then what are we in retrospect? |
| Swedish Massage: | Afraid I'll die in a big flambé. |
| Touching: | You said: Remember the night we couldn't celebrate my birthday on the beach in the rain with a number four from Pizza Rustica because our makeshift canopy failed in the rain as we danced we tried to protect the tiny light from the ohsocold wind but we couldn't stop leaning into each other. |
| Utopianism: | Our ballroom. |
| Vitelline: | Forming concentric relationships. |
| Wanton: | We always applied lipstick one right after the other. |
| Xanadu: | You always hated conceptual art, I said. |
| Zenith: | With a common axis. |
About the author:
Neil de la Flor's literary work has appeared in the Indiana Review, Hotel Amerika, Court Green, Barrow Street, Hayden's Ferry Review, and others. He is also the co-author of Facial Geometry, (NeO Pepper Press) a chapbook of collaborative triads written with Maureen Seaton and Kristine Snodgrass.
For further reading:
See the complete list of work by Neil de la Flor at 42opus. Browse the contents of 42opus Vol. 5, No. 3, where "In Toto" ran on November 13, 2005. List other work with these same labels: poetry.
