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by Mark Parsons

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Like a roll-down shutter
Security door
For a storage unit,

 

Or hole-in-the-wall
That’s closed for the night,
But instead of the few possessions

 

Of a guy
Who’s getting divorced
And losing his house and child,

 

Or a standing bar
In a neighborhood
Where the rent’s sky-high,

 

Locked inside
Is a fifties sci-fi, low budget movie
Or comic book

 

Monster—
Maybe a species of alien,
Or result of an out-of-control experiment,

 

Or nuclear accident,
Or repressed unconscious desires and drive
Manifested

 

By an actor wearing a rubber suit and
Assaulting the door from inside,
So the cotton pleats,

 

Peaked and pinched,
Bow and bulge,
Gravid white.

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Mark Parsons’ poems have been recently published or are forthcoming in Ex Pat Press, Dreich, Cape Rock, and I-70 Review. He lives in Tokyo, Japan.

 

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