Poetry

cocaine in the saltshaker

after Chaplin's ‘Modern Times’

You don't know why your head can't stop
following the spin of the lighthouse bulb.
Everything works within these circles;
the umbral fingernail triggers the curved

flick of gruel into a selfish eyeball.
You remember the dream as a factory fish,
swimming through the cogs of water
until the pressure pushed you out of sync

into the back of the ambulance,
forcing you to renounce every pattern
even those on the linoleum flooring.

Gary Hughes