To the Unfaire
Zebulon Huset
He said you’ll never be a meteor like that,
then disappeared in a ball of flames, poofed
without the hint of a phoenix wing’s flutter.
Shooting stars from bits of faire paper—it’s
rigged we know and still pull the trigger
until the clicks quit ticking bbs at backdrop.
The circle around the star is never complete,
we won’t win the stuffed Eeyore but the kazoo
is going to be all ours if we pump enough
quarters into the eyeless clown’s hand.
We never wanted to go to this nightmare.
The tickets weren’t even in the mail, one day
they were in my hand, you had your broom,
we were all but on our way out the door—
no one can blame the follow through. Breathe
deep. The kazoo is an unforgiving instrument
and we have to get the Loch Ness mating call
just right to unlock the escape room door.
That’s what the genie told us before turning
into a puff of cotton candy and dissolving
in your mouth, blue as a tiny cartoon, and
I did always figure I’d end up with Smurfette
but I never knew I’d find myself at the center
of a slipknot made of braided baited breath.
Zebulon Huset is a teacher, writer and photographer living in San Diego. He won the Gulf Stream 2020 Summer Poetry Contest and his writing has appeared in Meridian, The Southern Review, Fence, Atlanta Review & Texas Review among others. He publishes the writing blog Notebooking Daily, edits the journals Coastal Shelf and Sparked, and recommends literary journals at TheSubmissionWizard.com.