before Polly Jean had to
put on eyeshadow and designer
clothes, before some room
full of men in short-sleeved
dress shirts and skinny
ties rewrote the codes enough
to keep all the banks open and
the clocks ticking forward
toward Katrina.
It would’ve been nice to
ring in the new year on the curb
staring down my lampless
street into an emptiness so
black even the idea of a horizon
disappeared, stars dancing
overhead like the flowers
on Polly’s thrift store dress
while she screamed about
being five stories tall,
snot streaming across her smile.
Jack B. Bedell’s work has appeared in HAD, BULL, Blood+Honey, Dodo Eraser, Some Words, and Hawkeye Magazine.