Jeffrey Hecker
Meshanticut Green Interchange (Cranston, Rhode Island)
My mother co-hosts with somebody named Elles-Bells irregular Razz card nights, reverse form of
poker where the worst hand is actually best, and they deserve a whole ode about this bullshit, but
they get one line. My family and I do not matter to you, myself, or Warwick Orthodontia. Frayed
electrical wire killed the gentlest hygienist.
Teens are back to making kind eye-contact with adults in Exeter that gives latent vortex vibes.
Emotional intelligence. Since Canaan, the same goldenrod Mazda CX-5 parks by Damascus Grill.
Short-handed waitress serving late lunch crowd early supper while studying three classes of toxic
dust. National particle pollution exam is no longer virtual.
Jane Byrne Interchange
(Chicago, Illinois)
Whatever babies dream, adults can no longer take credit. Adults settle for holding babies in laps.
Adults celebrate successes and failures. Bombs over Iran over nothing. Adults would celebrate a
wholesale tinfoil discount. Adults pilot traffic helicopters. Cassini oval Aon Center skyscraper.
Adults reminisce babies as babies. Adults reminisce adults as babies.
Satin bowerbirds create non-nest twig structures. April, bowerbirds wait inside the little middle.
Going stag, bowerbirds pose for prom photos. Bowerbirds decorate by beak-breaking oystershells.
Who wants to mate the whole weekend? Bowerbirds are clapped out of the Comic & Entertainment
Expo. Bowerbirds like Mary Poppins need umbrellas to fly home.
Jeffrey Hecker is author of Rumble Seat (San Francisco Bay Press, 2011) & chapbooks Hornbook (Horse Less Press, 2012), Instructions for the Orgy (Sunnyoutside Press, 2013) & Ark Aft (The Magnificent Field, 2020). Recent work appears in HAD, South Dakota Review, and Bennington Review. A fourth-generation Kepanī via Hawaii, he teaches at The Muse Writers Center & reads for Quarterly West. @heckheck03.bsky.social