Simmer

Armored blimps circling 
while villains build home aquariums:

Know that when everything
is spider-cracked,
when car washes and
gas stations and banks
oversaturate suburbia,

no tablemaking demonstration
can save me. I light
a candle just to dip
my finger in the wax.
Envision my hesitation
as an oil rig. Snowbroth.
A lot of pennies

scattered on a bar crawl,
calling me to a newfound
sobriety, a tear in
the starscape I can finally
slip my hand through
to touch a blue-hot sun
ready to melt into a soup.

— KEN D. WASHINGTON

Ken D. Washington is a poet who lives in South Bend, Indiana, and has been published in a variety of journals in the Midwest and beyond. The Ball State graduate is working on his first poetry collection.