Alexis Quinlan
	Here, Only Because it’s anger’s hot slap I trust like the dim wooded road to grandmother’s lies I stoked your flares cadmium like a crazy hippie tablecloth with wild pink steam after the rinse like motley sky shreds strewn by an open hand swiping at firmament, forgotten god raring his retreat. He hadn’t gotten his way and he was going to take the damned house down with him. You won’t get your way, either, not this time, not since I’ve hop-scotched off that path beaten by four mendacious generations. As the castle crumbles I lean back back back yoga-arching to make like the tie-dyed dome and laugh all redly at you, little boy, who never saw how I don’t care whether it’s sweet or sour, bleak or bright – only here, only now. Why I Lose My Wallet. In Paris in 1983 The corner of a long bar for breakfast – I liked a bar for breakfast in Paris, hot black coffee and a croissant while the man ate more. I had a bull’s appetite in those days, but I was secret as a thief. I did ugly things, things you don’t want to know, to get rid of the evidence. To our left, the other thief – rouged cheeks and jeweled fingers, heavy, garish rings on withered ghostly long and working, his fingers, busy at something, changing, or smoking, we were all smoking in Paris in 1983. The dollar was strong like a bull, and I was right in the middle of away, it was a pudding, away, and I was the prize. No. Yes. Something horrid had been cooked, something anyone could smell except a boyfriend, not that boyfriend, anyway. The old queen sniffed it out though I shifted on the barstool to hide it which tells you how naïve I was at 21. Back in the hotel room I saw right away, the boyfriend saw, too, and back in the café – Ah non, madamoiselle! Dommage! The thief gone, the customers had never seen him before, and the barman’s steady look. So everybody knew. I pretended I knew, too, and maybe I already suspected the crooked root of it, the world like knotted fingers of an old queen garish and working hungry certain never to stop.