Epileptic Sour Herrings
Alison Eastley
It’s a god awful really bad alien abduction
Satan worshipping chronic fatigue
I’m on my knees in the bat cave of understanding
why it is bats make the nicest pets sort of days
when the phone doesn’t ring
and I should feel relieved and I would be if
it wasn’t for recovered memories of conspiracy
theories admittedly bizarre as anything
seen on TV when panic attacks caused by vampires
killing goats spread faster than paranoia
when the Millennium leader anxiously vents his spleen
regardless if there’s too many ghosts barking up trees
when the forest in the story always has some cryptic
river bending over the neophytes seeking initiation
even if I’m over thirteen and have been bleeding
long enough to forget I’ve read the instructions
carefully folded out on my bed where I lifted one leg
then the other and then I lied down with my knees up
wondering if a doctor from a magazine would understand
there’s still a chance of Dionysian romance
if epileptic sour herrings swim upstream
and you’ve never been in my dreams.
