“Requiem: Fin Inn,” a Flavor Town USA poem by Avery Gregurich

for M.T.

Let’s debate ovals, acoustics, the moral virtues of
curveballs. We’ll do it loud, live, staggering atop
the trusses of the river bridge. We’ll poke our faces
in front of the lights off the dam for effect. A sunflower
on the shore will serve as moderator. First we’ll finish these
frog legs, but I’ll give you cheap smokes, sure, but you have
to give me presidential bones, legal weed, and most of the
hardware required for a soft store opening.
Don’t be surprised that we are still trying
Nazis, incremental market-based environmental
solutions, and the designated hitter. All our cruise
ships are bed-ridden now, so many floating stages, but
the ancient land won’t even take us in anymore. Which
explains the pages of the Bible I found corn-husked outside
of town, past the cemetery. Psalms and Proverbs, warnings and
songs, mainly for disreputable waltzers, we two boatless boys from
river towns with too-many-teeth. Let’s compare lying flat,
smoking in bed without ash trays, the twelve-foot mirror
hankering in the other room. I bought beer in Hannibal not two
weeks ago. They had hung your face on the roof of the liquor
store. It needed a shave, a powerwash, collagen, apparently. Now
my garage is strung out, missing last-cast lines long since
retired to some barn corner somewhere. Probably back
home among the mayflies, who, alive for a day, never bother to eat
a thing. You can tell this frog, these frogs, found some of them first as
nymphs, but you got away. I got caught. Can’t you see where once there
were hooks?