Dan A. Cardoza
It’s platinum November, the smell of the Fourth of
July BBQ lingers, even the scent of missing you.
The chipped teal is emotive. Who knew grandpa
could speak the linguistics of acrylic some twenty
years gone.
Last summer the hinges swelled like a busy
molecule conventional, tightening the guiro and
crackle like a caw in a crow.
When you died I got drunk on a bench and smoked
unfiltered Camels into the tar of night. I imagined
the brass door knob changed channels every time I
took a leak.
The wafts of dust in the screen smelled sweet like
the sky and placenta and stale whiskey I drank at
our failed wedding, the purification of funerals
never quiet done.
I awake in the dawns early light from all the white
noise.
***
Dan A. Cardoza has an MS Degree in Education from UC, Sacramento, Calif. He is the author of four poetry Chapbooks, and a new book of fiction, Second Stories. Recent Credits: 101 Words, Adelaide, Australia, California Quarterly, Chaleur, Cleaver, Confluence, UK, Dissections, Door=Jar, Drabble, Entropy, Esthetic Apostle, Foxglove, Frogmore, UK, High Shelf Press, Poetry Northwest, Rue Scribe, Runcible Spoon, Skylight 47, Spelk, Spillwords, Fiction Pool, Stray Branch, Urban Arts, Zen Space, Tulpa, Australia and Zeroflash.