Perry Reis

Perry Reis Mar 12

I know a girl who saves

her dead orchid blooms

in a drawer in her vanity.

I called her sentimental

and she laughed, saying,

"I'm ****** in the head is

all."

Perry Reis Mar 7

In the Forest

Anita grabbed her picnic basket and ran

to the forest's edge. Mottled light splashed

about her feet as she disappeared beneath

its canopy. The air was sweet. Her pulse

quickened as she hurried on, sidestepping

a familiar obstacle and leaping over

a fallen tree. But, as she landed, she froze.

Trepidation sharpened her senses to a

razor's edge, and the basket slipped from

her hand. Fast in the throes of intuition,

she called for her niece, "Lucretia!!"

A gust of wind pushed through the canopy.

A branch of deadwood crashed to the ground.

Anita started forward, stumbling over the basket.

"Lucretia!"

Crows answered, and her fear boiled over.

"Lucretia!" she screamed, stumbling down the

darkening path. She rounded a boulder,

"Gracious, what lung power," Lucretia said.

"Where were you? You scared me half to death."

"Discovering a bitter, old swamp with fat tadpoles

lazing about in the murk of drowning pools."

"A swamp, you say?" questioned Anita.

"Yes-yes! A torment of green algae and

incessant croaking. There are fallen cedars,

patches of sunlight and orchids springing from

decay. The perfect milieu for a picnic."

"You're a horrid little thing," Anita said,

pulling Lucretia close and kissing the

top of her head.

Perry Reis Mar 4

Nouveau Riche

Sharp like obsidian, I can
dress my best and thrill you
or pull on a hoodie, and I'm
nothing to see.
*****, jewels, and private jets
are for suckers and players like
the ones seated around me,
especially this guy- the one in
the calfskin loafers. Spelling out
Mississippi takes longer than his
attention span.
Strange for a guy sitting at the final
table in the World Series of Poker.
Whoops, Melville's all in with his big
chip pile. That's why I sneer. The River
card tipped me. It showed me all I
needed about his hand. I scoop
up his chips. I'm happy now, but
he'll never know as I continue
sneering.
"Place your bets."
"No more bets."
"Coming out."
If Princeton was hard, the CIA
was harder. The Middle East
collects souls in a thousand
different ways: trip wires and
road bombs. Decapitations.
That's what you get when
you're bereft of divinity.
Yuck.

Perry Reis Feb 28

Tulips and Toads

Young Albert taped a sign to
his fold-out table and set it
on the sidewalk.

Lemonade 5 cents. Tulips and
toads are free to a good home.

A passing woman dropped a nickel
on the table.

Albert poured her lemonade and
held it out along with a tulip.

"Flowers are alone," said Albert.

"I know," replied the woman,
reaching for the flower.

"I have no toads to give," said Albert.

"No matter, young man, both
are desolate creatures."

"It's as I thought," mused Albert,
"There is no difference between
them."

The woman sipped from
her cup, saying,

"Toads are less charitable."

Perry Reis Feb 24

Pearl Harbor

When the first bomb hit, a pressure
shock blew my hat off. I jumped to my feet
and took off running. No direction. No
reason. More bombs punched through the
deck. Bulkheads tore apart and
mangled my shipmates. Black
smoke poured out of the breaches.
Fuel swept over the deck, and my feet
went from under me. I tried getting
up, but I kept going *** over bandboxes
in the same spot. I yelled to God,
"I'll swear off if you let me live!"
He crushed another volcano in his fist
and threw down the ****. A three-hundred
-pound hatch flew into the air. As high as
the ship's bridge, it went. It came down next to
me so hard that my feet went numb. That's
when I started crawling for the ship's
rail, crawling blind because of the
fuel in my eyes. Something jagged slashed
my right hand open. I didn't know what.
I couldn't see! I reached out, felt the ship's rail,
then dropped over the side. That's how I escaped
that tub. She'd been a proud ship once,
a heavy cruiser with eight-inch guns.
Six months later, I shipped out on a destroyer.
A U-boat sent her to the bottom with a single torpedo.
Down she went, and back into the water I went.
I felt sure the sharks were gonna rip me up.
Instead, a rescue operation came along….

Perry Reis Feb 21

Aphrodite

Our carriage rolled along a narrow street,

rumbling over cobblestones, passing signs

that creaked in the alpine breeze and streetlamp

flickers. The midnight sky and its crush of

stars glowed, a distance beyond the whisper

of my prayers.

Aphrodite gazed at me solemnly, saying,

"I have great pity for Sappho; she lept

from a cliff into the Aegean Sea.

So it is with all whom I love."

Perry Reis Feb 19

A Dried Garden

The hours I spend watching
seasons from my window
have increased of late.

Today, my sister, Felice, came
to my chamber, saying:

"Gregory, the gate needs oiling."

"Gregory, the roof is in disrepair."

Disrepair? I should think so,
yet I am loathe to leave this
garden bower and the thrill of its
funerary dreams.