ADRIAN SLONAKER - POEMS

Adrian Slonaker works as a copywriter and copy editor in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, USA. Adrian's poetry has appeared in The Mackinac, Postcard Poems and Prose, Red Weather, Red Fez, ZiN Daily Archive and others. ​

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​“Postcolonial Paramour” 

Your wood-hued wolf eyes,
your sheltering shoulders of Empire,
your commanding tones subduing me,
discussing lava lamps over tikka masala.
We swayed to the rhythm of an oscillating fan,
licking lassi from lips,
while I pondered a prayer of thanks.
 
I listened to you with the gentleness of bumblebee fur;
you lay into your neuroses like fists upon pizza dough.
When you finished, I donned your clothes,
not caring that they didn't fit.

​

​“...and many more” 

At 10:32 on the morning
of his 46th birthday he woke up
after five hours and twelve minutes of unsatisfying slumber
to streams of invasive sunlight
visiting him uninvited
through spindly blinds
derelict in their duty to keep him undisturbed.
Already his sinuses were celebrating with the non-returnable gift
of honking cold slimy mucus.
With a  baritone groan,
he nudged his naked gym-neglected Dad body-
settled by a colony of wiry silver chest hairs and pubes-
off the Sealy Posturepedic where
he chain-munches Cheetos and sleeps solo.
After careening into the kitchen in a contact lens-less blur,
he tenderly attended an arid palate
with a can of Fresca-deserted by Sheila
when she'd given him the heave-ho back in August-
extracted from the top shelf of the mini-fridge
the way he might feed a dachshund in the morning
if only he had a pet.

​