Adrian C. Louis


Song Of The Snake

Several years slithered by
and then an honor song played
on KILI-FM is how I find you
passed on to the spirit world.
First thought: the snake grew back.
There are some of us the snake will not
bite at all; we're either lucky or cursed.
Others will get bit, punch the snake in
the eyeball, and toss it away forever.

And others of us will get bit, yank
the snake away and leave the teeth
imbedded in our inflamed flanks.
We'll be fine for a while, then those
fangs will begin to gestate; eventually
the snake will grow back full-sized
and spitting, guiding us to stand
with shit-pants and wild, holy eyes,
hands out, begging for a cure.
Tahansi...that was you
when last we met.

-previously published at The Courtland Review


Because

Because she told me

she could cut hair with
a cheese grater &
because she knew Lincoln
was a red-necked fart packed
into a pigskin & thus saved
me from a sad professorship
there & because in the tail end
of my youth I staggered down
the dark alleys of her home soil,
I will now play this Indian poker
for a few hands though I know
I’m too old to win, but it doesn’t
matter because she said she loved
dirty, old warriors like me.


Googling Myself

In a futile exercise
to excise loneliness,
I Googled myself
& yes, it felt good
when I found my name
as a reference in her online
vita & followed a link to her
homepage & the subsequent
photographs, her conjugal
scrapbook with husband
seeming to be a proper
academic egghead who
could never have had the
foggiest notion that she
whispered wild perversions
to me long before she
said, “I do” to him, but
what I can’t remember
is if our souls connected.
Did they? If they did
then why did I ditch her
when I could’ve had her?
She looks so delicious in her
white wedding dress that
I’m Googling what’s left of
my weak flesh right now.


Winter In The Blood

Blizzard, blizzard, white
hair snow congregating
at the temples & I have
not thawed a single
soul in three years.

Okay, everybody sing.

Monja, Monja.
I want your big begonia.

-all three poems previously published at SN Review