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 granddaughter.
I swear a rosebush murdered itself in his flesh.
He passed me like a ghost.
Later, in the dark, as I pleasured myself,
touching my youthful self again,
the cicada hand, for a brief moment,
became the smooth hand of Ovid,
transforming the entire world.
Joe Dolce
White Kangaroo
The white kangaroo watched me there,
at edges of the bush-brown shore,
as still as stone, it held my stare.
The wind rose a rain-scented air
of twig-showers and storm-sheared roar,
the white kangaroo watched me there.
Grey sky was thunderous din and blare,
bark from the tilting tree trunks tore,
as still as stone, it held my stare.
Standing quiet, without a care,
a twitching ear, and nothing more,
the white kangaroo watched me there.
Albino coat of fur, how fair!
Her pelt as though snowed-white with hoar,
as still as stone, she held my stare.
Paws up, chest-high, as though in prayer,
to the sunset smoking the shore,
a white kangaroo watched me there,
as still as stone, it held my stare.
Joe Dolce
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