by Anthony Madrid

Published in Issue No. 152 ~ January, 2010

ROUTE 50: Damen: to 35th/Archer, Orange Line. October 12th, 2007. And coming into the home stretch.

This. Is Insanity. Doors open on the left, at Insanity. They have put a padlock on Hell, and I—am trying out combinations.

Here come Hippy Santa Claus with his overalls and plastic flute. Warm as a bruise, I eye the entrance to Armadillo and Napkin.

This day let armored insect advance its bebarbative suit. It tears nor the case, nor the bagged and beautiful muscle . . .

Beautiful Lady, show me your muscle. (Show me your muscle, Beautiful Lady, and show me your holster, guy with a gun!)

Officer Hunkasaurus is stripped to the duty belt. And now they’re painting him with wrestling oil to make him even sexier—!

His task is to shimmy up to the top of that flagpole. God! it’s like a heat wave in Syria: just look at these suffering birds:—

Common-as-popcorn hopping sparrows with their mouths all hanging open: It lets the overeager heat out like the screaming end of a teapot.

Poor little perching birds, boiling like the blob of water that precedes the flame up the cubical kitchen matchstick!

Going to Ife, we face Ife; coming back, we still face the same way. The skull is too small for the brain. The tines on this fork are all splayed out.

MARDUD, whose magic song made a mountain fold its tiny arms, will now effect the dissolution of the Book of Proverbs.

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Anthony Madrid lives in Chicago. His poems have recently appeared or are forthcoming in AGNI Online, the Boston Review, the Cincinnati Review, Forklift Ohio, the Iowa Review, LIT, Now Culture, Shampoo, 6X6, and Web Conjunctions. The title of his manuscript is The Getting Rid of the That Which Cannot Be Done Without.