red dunce cap

While you’re in the big box store

and I’m parking the pickup

the business goes out of business.

I enter and find gnomes and trolls

bagging merchandise that now

belongs to carnivorous hedge funds.

I can’t find you, so ask a pert

and perky garden gnome sporting

a red dunce cap. Yes, he saw you

go off with a dim husky man.

He hands me a list of convicted

sex criminals. “One of them,”

he claims. Dust and ruin creep

from storerooms to clog the aisles.

The lights fail. Emergency

exit signs blink. I exit

and wonder how your new life

is going. Maybe you snatched

a red dunce cap while escaping

the ordinary suburban world.

I hope you’re wearing it proudly,

your new lover grinning like thunder

as he adjusts it on your head.