Ode on a Hypothetical Busch Gardens Williamsburg Urn

Like the fetus looking in
its grainy aquarium like
a haunted gummy bear or

the rubber squeeze doll Panic
Pete, you don’t technically
exist, but I think about you a lot.

How much you mean to me
and how weird it is that if you are
somehow not in mint condition,

I’d be sad. So what if you’ve housed
the lisping symphony of bursts
produced by a graveyard

soda of Coke, Vanilla Coke, Fanta,
Sprite, and Barq’s? So what
if you’re a little dented, warped,

the four colored inks used to print
your eternal scenes a little pixelated
or misaligned? All I really want is you

to not shatter. To keep
your flimsy polyethylene shape
and roll down time’s slope into

today’s bright ache. Otherwise,
who else will show tomorrow’s
archaeologists the neon triptych

proving Fabio is no god, just some
stand-in by publicists enlisted to
deflower a new hypercoaster with

his mischievous smirk, his brow
as untroubled as Apollo’s as
Marsyas falls mercifully silent (first panel)?

And that the goose that slams into
his perfect nose (next panel) is not
a metaphor but an actual nesting goose

the coaster spooked then killed?
In your third panel, Fabio returns
to the station, blood feathering

his nasal bridge as he slumps,
a wounded boob surrounded
by blond women who laugh

like water mocking rock its staunchness.
In the final panel, as evening licks
the luster from the coaster’s rails,

I am with him in the bathroom, dabbing
gently at his swelling orbital, his sherd-sharp
cheekbone red as a Ferrari’s brakes.

He winces. He nestles his hairdo
against my chest. It rustles as he heaves.
Hisses like a pneumatic gush of soda

saying Rest now, tired torch of thirst.
Sweet windgust slicing through the grasslands
without harming a single blade.

Read more from Issue 22.1.