THE PRESIDENT’S DREAM
So there I was with the baby, the board, the pitcher and the sopping cloth and it seemed like the right thing to do. It’s monstrous speak! Then, a giant hand lifted me off the ship and threw me onto the arterial ground. Sometimes monsters are so big you can’t see them. But you can feel their hands ragdolling you. There were wild ponies all around me, dark-eyed, stranded, their hoofs sunken into a long network of engorged veins. When the monster kissed me, I felt its dream in my mouth like so much water. Like so much blood. I couldn’t breathe. There should be a word for a kiss between monsters. There should be a word for their dreams. For stuck ponies. For babies like that.
FIELD TRIP TO THE WHITE HOUSE
The towering cookie chases the children. Its high, booming laugh echoes down dim corridors. Children scream and bawl when they glimpse its shiny black eyes and dripping red mouth. Nonetheless, parents drag their children through the maze by the wrists. But the Gingerbread Man is quicker than anyone can imagine. In a blink, he appears behind a child and grabs it by the neck. Some are never found. Some are found half-gobbled. Some are found with their eyes gouged and plugged with black buttons.
ALICE’S MMA FIGHT WITH THE PRESIDENT
Alice slips down a hole and lands in a hot cup of entrails. Now, she’s guttin’ it out with the President. First a calf-slicer, then an Achilles’ lock, and then, Alice gets em’ in a neck crank. But, the President wriggles out, jumps high in the air and executes a sloppy double suplex into a rear naked choke, cutting the blood to Alice’s head. She’s bleeding from her nose. She’s rolling around in her blood-damp nightclothes. She’s trying to tap out, but the refs don’t see her. She can’t breathe. Can’t anyone see she can’t breathe? Alice shrinks down, but the President just drops her in his pocket and fondles her like a coin. The audience boos. Alice becomes a tall shovel and bonks him on the skull. The whole world shakes. They both fall flat on their sides and she turns back into a girl. Quickly, the President gets her in a Peruvian Necktie. Blood leaks from her ear. She can’t breathe! She’s trying to tap out, but the refs don’t see her. The entire stadium can’t breathe! We’re all down here in a hole, nibbling on opposite sides of a magic pony.
Kristin Bock holds an MFA in poetry from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, where she teaches in the Business Communication Program. Her first collection, CLOISTERS, won Tupelo Press’s First Book Award and the da Vinci Eye Award. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Black Warrior Review, Columbia, Crazyhorse, FENCE, Pleiades, Prairie Schooner, Salt Hill and VERSE. Poems also live in two anthologies: Apocalypse Now: Poetry and Prose for the End of Days, as well as The Museum of All Things Awesome and Go Boom, both by Upper Rubber Boot Press.
