Bedside Balloons She gestures to the candy-bowl filled with condoms A motley pile of foil squares Scrawled with

names liked Twisted Sensations, Her Pleasure, or Fire and Ice Probably thought up by some jaded liberal arts major Smelted down and poured into Marketing Assistant I. The plastic bowl rests atop a vinyl tablecloth, Figure-headed with an unassuming sheet of poster board World Aids Day in heavy block capitals, Like an epitaph on weathered granite That sits upon the tables prow And cleaves the undulating waves of passersby Funneled into the narrow stretch of stained concrete That bridges the stagnant lakes Overgrown with algae and mute pines. She drags the frat-boy flotsam from the surge, Casts into passing schools of Southern bells Their eyes drilled into the procession of shit stains And spilled chlorophyll And tugs up lobster pots teeming with skater-punks And scraggly hipsters suckling clove cigarettes. After each catch is tagged with pamphlets And coat pockets crammed with condoms, Theyre released into the meandering stream Some to nestle the foil squares in wallet-pouches Before seeking the nights comfort in the hurly-burly Of warm bodies beneath black lights and bass. Another walks just beyond sight, Claws open the package, And stretches the latex over shaggy, bleached hair. In the last sputtering incandescence of daylight, She tucks her cloth into a tight triangle And sets it on the tabletop Like a flag on a coffin lid. She takes a photograph from her wallet A middle-aged man Beaming over horn-rimmed glasses At the swaddled tuft of thin hair Slicked with amniotic fluid. Behind her, The latex balloons over a flattened snorting nose.

Micro-fissures metastasize over the thin membrane And rupture into a cloud of stale breath, Lubricant and flaccid shrapnel. Laughter ricochets off of the brick, Carrying medical tubes that coil around the mans arms Wrench him into a hospital bed And pump the color from his skin, As tiny hands clutch pulpy fingertips And hope for a sound more human Than the metallic screech of transience.