» Poetry

Vanity

Hairpins on the vanity—

I’ve lost count.

 

Fellow suburbanites,

the pedestrians outpace the growing

 

traffic, hair hovers above cul-de-sacs

like tentacles. Go out,

 

get stung. Letting the touching

do its work, I venture into

 

wires. I feel like a lover.

I feel sorry that sex

 

rarely happens in public.

Not that I’d be looking for it,

 

only stumble upon a couple

of fellow loners trying

 

to prove to their neighbors

they aren’t lonely.

 

No other way to convince

the jury, unless

 

a man grabs a gun

to blast billions of bullets,

 

and satisfies himself

that he can live without

 

Homo sapiens.

Nearby, imperious crows line up

 

on power lines. Momentary silence

before their firing squad of gazes—

 

spare me—I’ll return home—

the hair—accidental curios

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Steven Chung

Steven Chung splits his time between the San Francisco Bay Area and Vermont. His poems appear or are forthcoming in FIELD, Indiana Review Online, Passages North, Rattle, and Redivider.