Heavenly Ironies #5

By Melanie Browne

Mother Teresa with her
feet up on a winged ottoman
watching “Let’s Make A Deal,”
screaming in the seraphic amphitheater,
“Take the money!”

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A Fondness for Quoting Nietzsche

By Melanie Browne

One night out of sheer boredom
I conjured Nietzsche’s spirit
from the grave,
he was a boring fellow,
kept his head tucked into his neck
he looked around sheepishly,
and immediately started
quoting himself
but I yelled,
STOP!
and asked him a series of questions,
such as,
Have you ever seen the moon turn blood red?
Have you ever done a swan dive into a vat of acid?
Do you know what happens to kittens born with three heads?
he had no answer of course,
not wanting to indict himself,
and with a sad look he vaporized
into my Vodka Collins

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Portrait of a bad sailor girl

By Melanie Browne

I walk with the Merman,
we sit together as the tide rolls in

Lenin’s death was staged, he tells me
while stroking his long white beard,

The decaying parrot that sits on my shoulder
only speaks in mantras

I give a hard push
and the merman falls back into the sea,

He struggles with sea serpents,
but I stare ahead stoically

A cool blue haze obscures my view,
I pick at seaweed twisted around my ears

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Wading through a fish kill with Confucius

Melanie Browne

Hey Confucius,
I say,
look at all these
glassy eyeballs,
like shiny glittering stepping stones
as far as the eye can see,
and Confucius
says something like
beauty is everywhere
blah-blah- but not
everyone sees, blah,
and then he looks
kind of depressed
and I say
what’s up C-man?
why the long face,
and he looks at me
and says,
man,

it’s all bullshit.

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Suggestions From The Allergist

By Melanie Browne

as my nose had
floated in the air
and was no longer
connected in any way to
my face,
a swollen gelatinous
mass, a Gogol delusion,
I decided to take the
suggestions from the
allergist,
henceforth I buried
the cat,
his dander no longer
a problem,
my dermatologist
is also quite impressed!
and asked me
about my
beauty routine,
I buried the cat,
I told him,
I stuck him
in the garden,
in the ground,
next to the onions

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