Carson Reed (lodo1@aol.com) is a Denver poet, author of four books the most recent of which is "Tie Up the Strong Man" (1989, Bread & Butter Press). His work has appeared in many little magazines including Bizara, Rant, and Yellow Silk, and he's a frequent contributor to RealPoetik






Salvation (3/8ths Inch)

Mad Hatter rolls into town a gaudy bulbous boxcar creaking behind a Ford F-250 (Carney in his '62 Falcon his baby teardrop trailer & his hangover trail still further behind). Carney assembles Mad Hatter from fused memory, wads jackets of gum over the stripped fingerless stubs of bolt-ends in the dark grease underneath the plain steel gasket cradling the spindles of the fiberglass orange, green, purple teacups, nips at the pint of Peppermint Schnapps hidden in the trapdoor, bums blunts from the shaved pierced hunches of baggy-pants boys slouching down the long, slow line to Mad Hatter gangly arms draped around soft, fleshy pale girls shining new in silver lipstick and perfect white laceless tennies, oblivious to the rattle of hollow plywood in this leering gesticulation of light & music. Sometime before dawn Carney'll jerk off in his trailer still filled with the rapture of someone somewhere's daughter's screams of glee, her blue panties sailing like skylarks across the drunken warp of Mad Hatter. (Quiet as fish, covert angels eating salted peanuts set to work, threading an invisible cosmic nut - 3/8ths inch - to the underside of a giant purple teacup whistling timidly upon its greasy hinge.)

-- Carson Reed

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