Noctivagators

A significant percentage of our social
creatures are genetically nocturnal,
phototropically drawn to purple
coronas of neon signage that arch
like eyebrows over doorways
in downtown alleys, who feel
the sonic booms of subwoofers
in basement rooms that vibrate
up through the cobblestones
to buzz in their bloodstreams
from foot sole to cerebellum,
signaling come right this way,
where the pheromonic tug of a perfume
inappropriate for the office
lingers near the entrance. Somewhere
in there, someone’s Beatrice is waiting.
Responses to such stimuli are contracts
with their futures, the propagation
of a species at stake.

Terror Bird

It’s that triangle of apprehension between
your shoulder blades and the nape of your neck,
which senses the unseeable presences that stalk
with ravenous intent—the weaponized drone
hovering high in the clouds, the terror bird perched
on the crossarm of a prairie power pole, a pair
of orange eyes in the cedar limbs that hears
your frenzied burrowing beneath six inches of snow.
Or even now as you sit in bed and click on Accept.
Accept or not, they know every keystroke before
it’s made. Someday you’ll owe them a kidney.
You’re a soon-to-be gap in a cyclical food chain,
a deleted digit in a theoretical string.

Department Store

In a rivalrous act of co-worker betrayal,
the girl who ran the accessories counter
tattled that the blonde in cosmetics had
slyly canted all of her mirrors to observe
me as I peddled electronics across the aisle.
Intrigued, I calculated the sums of the angles
of reflection + incidence and drew
a self-flattering revelation in the proof
of the warning, thereby leading
to a stockroom rendezvous with cosmetics
blonde, whereas accessories chick would
become a future ex-wife. No clear-cut winners
in this one.

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  • R. A. Allen’s work has appeared in journals such as the New York Quarterly, BODY, The Penn Review, RHINO, and The Los Angeles Review, among others. His poetry has been nominated for a Best of the Net award and two Pushcart Prizes. In addition to his poetry, he has published short stories in notable outlets like The Literary Review, The Barcelona Review, PANK, and Best American Mystery Stories. Allen resides in Memphis, Tennessee, near the Mississippi River.

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