You Can Find the Answers on Page 56
Yet you linger. A question mark
hooks your eagerness from well within you like a wedgie.
The letters to its left, astronauts denuded of their suits,
vacuumed and suspended in the astral sneeze.
What is a four-letter word used primarily to request specification.
You flip to Page 53, almost committing, still innocent: you can find
monkeys in the Caribbean that have acquired a taste for liquor,
apparently. You shake the magazine
for a subscription card.
56 calls to you, from its summer cottage
on the right coast. Its upside-downness meant
to chasten it. Can you hear its beck over the radio,
the radio that is a question’s distance from its answer, there, in a fool’s
paradise of gratification only a little
delayed? You can have it all and a magazine subscription.
Go on, keep flipping past the last page. Past your lap,
through to the real monkeys drinking real daiquiris with wee green swords,
on a ruinous beach with palm trees the shape of old arms,
and answer me that.
From CNQ 95, The Games Issue (Spring 2016)