across the room, a dainty
ladybug landed in the middle
of my drink. She floated
her orange brown shell
with black polka dots inking
the scotch on the rocks —
ice-cold ether resigned her.
She left a bitter yuck,
a tincture of insect juice
spiking the Kilt & Castle,
but the buzz was far better
than that vetch of stale celery
dunked in a Bloody Mary
with house flies frantically
paddling their tiny fecal feet.
She winks back. Perhaps
I’ll try the red agave worm
in the bottom of the bottle
of Mescal. I hear it swills
an erotic magic: hallucinogenic
and sweet.
John C. Mannone has work in Adanna Literary Journal, Anacua Literary Arts Journal, and Number One, and in Artemis, Poetry South, Human/Kind Journal, Red Coyote, Blue Fifth Review, New England Journal of Medicine, Baltimore Review, and others. He won a Jean Ritchie Fellowship in Appalachian literature (2017) and served as the celebrity judge for the National Federation of State Poetry Societies (2018). He’s a retired professor of physics living between Knoxville and Chattanooga, TN. http://jcmannone.wordpress.com
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