Jonah Howell

cages

 

After Tom Tom crossed the beach

to ask my friends and I for wine

his question filled my mind for hours

as things do, and circled

as things do, and expanded tenfold

as things do. I saw him, I swear I did,

the past Tom Tom wriggling into shape

in the sand grains

as I looked down at my toes, stretching.

 

His landscape took over the sandscape:

Pacific Boulevard sprouted

on the strand, dunes-buildings,

and Tom Tom strutting along,

flat-bill cocked up, whistling a

whispery tune and twirling

around streetlamps with

not a rain cloud for miles,

licking up the sea breeze,

at ease and chillin’ hard.

 

So

Tom Tom was walking down Pacific, right,

and he was super baked, right,

so he had his eyes closed

and he thought he smelled this fish market

over to the left, right,

and he took a big whiff

[snifff]

and said,

“Top o’ the mornin’, ladies,”

‘cause Afroman’s Crazy Rap had been

running through his head for hours,

right? But no response.

He opened his eyes

to a 7-11, not a fish market in sight,

and he realized:

This whole city smells like a fish market.

I must be really high.

Riiiiiiight.

 

So just after sundown in this

small beach town, Tom Tom

went to browse around for

some cheap wine

to pour into his down time:

Still a few hours

‘til the dead-head crowd would hit the beach

and bring him some prospective clients.

 

So he walked in, whistling away,

halfway present, floating really,

and the 7-11 clerk stood up and said,

“Hello sir, you can’t come in here

without a shirt or shoes on. Sorry,

sir.” Tom Tom, still half-present,

still halfway whistling through a

halfway grin, told him,

“Don’t worry ‘bout it, good sir.

I’m just popping in for a wine,

my fine sir, nothing to fret

yourself over right here.” And

he winked and he bounced

to the fridge in the back.

 

(Now he thought it,

he hadn’t thought a bit about

his minimalistic fashion.

No, he’d just bopped out the house

and whistled his way to warmth,

as one does in the coastal Virginia autumn.)

 

This clerk was having none of it.

“Sir, I’m gonna have to ask you to leave.

Sorry, sir.” Bold the “S” in “Sorry”

to denote at once the greatest

sincerity and insincerity. Still

Tom Tom floated up the aisle,

whipped out a bottle,

sniffed it with a flourish

with the cork still on,

hand on a hip and

swilling it. “Hm. Nice, nice…”

 

 “Sir, please leave, sir.”

Such politeness! Tom Tom was certain

the clerk had not a problem with him,

just giving lip service to policy,

right. So he

trip tropped up the aisle

as a Tom Tom does and

twirled with his wine and then

hopped in the check-out line,

smiling a wide one to the

utterly pissed clerk.

 

“Leave.”

 

“But wait, my good man,

I’m on my way out.

I’ll pay for this wine—“

He pulled out his $4.36—

“then jump out lickety-split.

Cool?”

 

“Put up the wine and leave,

sir.” The two other customers—

a woman, age thirty

but looking forty what with

the occasional crack,

not-so-occasional cig,