Joe Dolce: ‘White Kangaroo’, ‘Royal Night Out’, ‘Miss Ohio Dummy’ and ‘Cicada’

Royal Night Out

Under Augustan protection,
of absolute darkness,
bare-arsed rain
once again cavorts,
drunk and uninhibited.

Hours later, hungover,
and embarrassed,
after a long night’s revelry,

naked raindrops quickly
slip out of wet garments,
for Victorian dawn.

Joe Dolce

Miss Ohio Dummy

Mackenzie Bart, 22, and her
ventriloquist doll, Roxy,
won Miss Ohio 2014,
with a rendition of Mary Poppins’
Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.

My nineteen-year-old cousin,
Barbara Joyce Randa,
won Miss Ohio, 1954.
I remember, at seven years old,
sitting on her lap, dumbstruck,
whispering that I loved her.
She made me promise to wait,
until I grew up,
so I could marry her.

She broke my promise.

Joe Dolce

Cicada

My body is too old,
for marathon lovemaking,
all night wrestling wet,
into exhausted dawns.
I look at my parchment skin,
transparent as the wing of a bush cicada.
Soon it’ll be a clinging husk.
The young boy I saw today
couldn’t have been more than twenty,
younger than my…