Poetry By Adrian Slonaker

The Lagoon

The dented suitcase shows its age,
and so does she.
Staccato and stoic is her step;
weary but yearning are her eyes;
she follows the curve of the lagoon,
black and still as the day when
she was evicted
from hard-earned, hard-loved contentment.
Like a Mondrian painting without its stripes,
she feels denuded of her normalcy.
She's returned to confront she doesn't know what,
to clutch at the kind of closure that doesn't come.
She exhales huskily,
checks her watch as if for wisdom,
and walks away yet again.





Inspection

A glance in the looking-glass
compels a confrontation with conflict,
What motivated the masquerade?
Fits of fear and shards of shame
slash and lacerate
like in a back-alley brawl
to the tipping point of frantic flight
from festering fantasies.
Games of closeness and chess
were tagged for transience,
having been carefully constructed
on cornerstones of fakery.
Washing away salty splotches of stage make-up
reveals skin I scarcely recognize.
Hearing a name ringing strange,
I face my eyes,
orbs of truth,
and envy the blind.





Initiation

Tonight the gap,
the vacant void
responsible for tears and turmoil
was filled
surrealistically and sensuously
by the fierce, wolf-eyed Belgian
who introduced me to myself
in a riot of rough tenderness.
amid a dazzling display
of chrome, pink, and ivory,
the aroma of bubble gum and bleach.
I’ve been exposed;
I’ve been violated;
I’ve been possessed,
as lingering childhood needs haunted me
in a haze of confusion and comfort.
like a virtuoso he played me,
absconding with a virginity I never knew I had,
and here I lounge in the loo of an ice cream parlor
alone and forever sidelined,
yet smiling in my afterglow.





11:00 p.m.

Encircled by the depth and blackness
of the ancient elms,
inspiring by day,
scary as hell at night,
we meet.
Those glittering eyes-as if feverish, but in a good way,
the food of my dreams! 
At once my senses are smothered
by your fingers, your presence,
witnessed only by a few furtive stars somewhere
And a relentlessly gurgling stream.
Wagnerian operas thunder through my mind,
replaced by the estival sounds of a carnival.
This shouldn't be,
but it is-
before the final wave of overwhelming wonder
yields to guilt,
to crushing guilt,
and an anticlimactic, awkward farewell,
until next time.





Trespasser


In the desolation of the desert-
My desert,
infused with blasts of flesh-roasting heat-
my cabin, my voluntary exile, my world,
populated with modcons like aircon,
the silent, ever-shifting dunes of sunburnt beige
revolving relentlessly around it.
 
You came marching
in military fatigues, swimming in your own filthy sweat,
bootprints marking a trail from nowhere to nowhere.
Angry, I felt invaded,
my eccentrically tidy calm ripped asunder
by a trespasser.
 
Yet I recognized you:
your searching eyes,
your persistent pursuit of the elusive.
I knew you, damn it.
 
I set fire to my own fences,
I invited you inside-
shading you in cool darkness,
bathing you in ice with my own fingers,
feeding your lips chilled fruits,
feeding your eyes swirling watercolors.
 
Somewhere between your solitude of bravery
and my solitude of fear,
a freaky trust was forged.
By the time you trekked off,
my mind had been broadened,
and yours had been blown.




My Grandpa Was a Mennonite

My grandpa was a Mennonite,
but I've never washed anyone's feet,
although I've sucked strangers' toes.
My grandpa had gray eyes like me,
but his, unlike mine, weren't ringed with
Rimmel Scandaleyes Retroglam mascara.
My grandpa, a son of Alsace, spoke French like me,
but the tongue with which he spoke it
wasn't used to French kiss meaty male mouths
the way I do.
My grandpa begot three kids-
all model Mennonites,
but I've nurtured ninety thousand neuroses-
all strictly secular.
My grandpa swilled wine (some Anabaptists tipple) with his brother,
but I quaff caffeine-free diet cola alone. ​

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Bio: Adrian Slonaker works as a copywriter and copy editor in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, with interests that include vegetarian cooking, wrestling, and 1960s pop music. Adrian's poetry has appeared in Uut Poetry, Ginosko Literary Journal, Zingara Poetry Picks, Plum Tree Tavern, Amaryllis, Oddball Magazine, and others.

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