Dylan Willoughby

Dylan Willoughby's work has appeared in Denver Quarterly,

featured on Can We Have Our Ball Back and Shampoo, and

is forthcoming in Spinning Jenny. He can be reached at

dylan_willoughby@yahoo.com.

The Precious Cool Beans

She is singing the anthem for some kooky people.

He strides in as the beautiful one, well-lighted

With the chiseled features we want him for.

It is not late, yet. She is putting her

Heart into it, the song called "Flip." An

Occasion piece mired in irrelevance.

We acknowledge her passion, though

The peanut gallery in our souls winces.

The rain outside is green and hits the angled windows

Like clumps of seaweed or the terrifying implements

Used in car washes. The cleft-chinned, high-cheeked,

Comely one withdraws, playing the Goth.

He feels as if the spirits are ballroom dancing

On his spleen. It is the fashionable time for

Melancholy, to bathe in the blues like it's a party

For woe. The raspberries on the plate are

Recuperative this time. The song "Flip" enters

Its final movement and the anxious crowd fidgets.

"Your prize is sentience, Olivia, presiding over

The precincts of flux." An unexpected end, but

Welcome, the audience thinks. A departure from

The libretto derived from a press release! Relief

Sifts through the people like an unclaimed fragrance;

no,

Not relief but satisfaction.

"Will you come and be my love,

Be fruitful, multiply--fructify or bust!--" the

beautiful one asks

The singer. His question presages such connubial

Bliss the crowd showers them with the aperitif, cool

beans

Including those of the garbanzo variety...

It is a story I know well, I tell the retired

reporters.

I mopped the floors that night. Slopping up those

Wretched legumes. How I had loved her!

Dylan Willoughby