Jambalaya

painting borrowed from bing

Jambalaya

Tucker was holding her finally,
after the dearth of clues had led him
in mad circular patterns, a man in
a maze tearing at his uniform, oblivious
to the Creole de rigueur, his weeping
finally ebbing as he stared at her,

reduced to a double handful of pasty black
char, her bright anima already fled on silver
wax-wings, with tepid marsh gases busily
percolating over his steel-toed boot tops
he painfully bent over to retrieve a loop
of white lace once worn on her swan neck;

August in the deep swamp, cottonmouths
uncoiling brazenly on damp low limbs,
behemoth gaters croaking a terrible
reptilian sonata, its timbre chilling,
the fiery air thick with the acidic pungency
of skunk cabbage as he placed his sad
lips deep into the sticky char, zestfully
kissing the frailest memory of his
lost Cajun love.

Glenn Buttkus

January 2011

Listed as #11 over on Monday Melting-Week 2

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