Dodo Eraser

It was a real party all right, with bongos
and foghorns and this crazy Turk
named Oz who kept groping all the girls
while the Indian kids all danced like seaweed
to the various loud rhythms produced
and grooved on, the bassplayer thumping
his bony chest but the Austrian girl
looking bored as always—at least until
the neighbors complained at midnight
about the noise and trampled flowers.
The landlord was exacerbated, but what
could she do? Insults were exchanged
and we smashed a few pineapples 
in the kitchen before getting bored and
leaving for a nearby museum. No one
knew Biff and I pissed in the storage closet
between the Picasso and Dürer prints.
Otis kept clearing his throat, it was just
too loud to speak at the bar, so we returned
to the party as the police left with someone
wailing and rearview mirrors dangled
like Van Gogh’s ear in the parking lot.
The mad Turk Oz was banished at last 
in a taxi. We continued getting motherless,
not to mention all those reefersticks,
and at least one paramour cried 
in the bathroom as Dora persisted 
in her interrogation about other girls—
me countering with my own personal aspiration,
to be the happiest fool alive!—until
the sun put on its weary face once more
and Dora and I sat in the parking lot necking,
the Duke playing from an open window above.
Triumphant, we survivors left together:
you, me, Andrei, and Dora. In town,
we ate bacon and eggs and sipped more beer
before passing out in the sun by the river,
all four of us dreaming as one
of what we had put off until tomorrow,
and the tomorrow after that.

J S Khan has published fiction and nonfiction in a variety of a literary journals, and his poetry has been published or is forthcoming in BRUISER, Michigan City Review of Books, and Burial Magazine.