MUCH FLOWERS OF THIS AND FURTHER ZONES

Some of my best friends were stuck
in black holes. They’re royally clean.
They have machine guns. And it’s not fair

to assume they’re stuck. It might not
be a clogged time/space toilet pipe thing.
It could be a meat-grinder, a men’s

department, a nice log flume. Since losing them,
I’ve made new friends with this bastard
lady: she was made of flowers, or

she only wore flowers, or she was
always eating my flowers. She smelled
like a royal soap. We had good times

reminiscing about when soap was
such a huge deal. I had a stupid haircut.
She had a couple eyeballs. We had

beautiful soaps. She said when all of
her kids died she was done. At the
end of our series of hangouts

she took a motion detector
and one of my machine guns and left
me a note: I’ll always love you,
in a bastard way. I’ve taken one of
the machine guns, the one with
a fish face painted on the muzzle,

with fish genitals painted on the
trigger area. I think I’m going to space
to find your cleanest friends. They will die.

I’m killing them. I love you. I am the fertile sea.
The note left me wondering what
soap I could use for this mood.

A forest could teach the moon
to be a brutal bar of soap.

Daniel D’Angelo's poetry has appeared in The Collagist, Alice Blue, H_NGM_N, B O D Y, and elsewhere. Formerly Associate Editor at the Association of Writers & Writing Programs, he’s from eastern Iowa and lives in Arlington, VA, where he still works as an editor.