UNDERGROUND VOICES: POETRY


R.A. ALLEN

Homes Away

We could either not believe our luck
or we took it all for granted:
here was a space on the physical plane
rife with exotic, quixotic foreigners
just like us,
a place far from harpsichord mom
and the leaning tower of dad.
In those strip mall videocades
our faces were limned in the limelight
of green cathode violencia
never a thought for anyone
but ourselves.

On a three-day liberty from Subic Bay
we jeepneyed into Olongapo
for meatonastick and a honey-ko, all
responsibility shed like a moon suit.

Ah, our pied-à-terre in Key Biscayne,
where we fondled Brandi in better days,
or the fish camp by the bridge when cash was tight—
any contrivance to escape the wife and kids.

In the pixels of surveillance tape,
in the reflection behind the bar,
in the five fathom roar of an OxyContin daze,
in the rapture of a God dreamed up by
someone else,
we notice we are almost free
of human encumbrances.


R. A. Allen's fiction and poetry have appeared or are forthcoming in *The Literary Review, The Barcelona Review, the New York Quarterly, Boston Literary Magazine, The Recusant (UK), Word Riot, Pear Noir, and others. Selected for Houghton Mifflin's The Best American Mystery Stories 2010. Nominated by LITnIMAGE for Dzanc Books' Best of the Web 2010. He lives in Memphis.

More at http://www.nyqpoets.net/poet/raallen







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