Removable Feast by William Merricle

At the imaginary banquet
the ex-lovers are represented by
a bucketful of dove feathers,
the cosmic order portrayed in Lucky Charms,
unreasonable expectations, syntactical gaffes,
infelicities of style, pH imbalances,
Official Notice of Change in Terms,
cobwebs as expressions of divine justice,
the absence of feck, silly putty molecules, ennui,
Visine, Elmer’s Glue-All, broken trusts,
the words you waited all summer to hear,
the Dead Sea Scrolls prophesying
the romantic things we used to do,
boredom in the outlying areas,
a gross of Bufferin, a trickle of forgetfulness,
a freedom-fry-adorned wardrobe with
inescapable eucharistic overtones,
the Buddha’s rendition of Eve of Destruction,
the eight spaceships of the heart,
plain white pumps left on the blasted heath,
faiths lost and found,
infinite fragility payment due, turtles below,
all that is solid melts into air,
angels hired to transport the blue,
Keats’s nightingale, americium 241,
Eden-sweat and pomosexual surgery.

By dessert all
non-essential personnel have been evacuated.
The seller of the mist goes bankrupt.
The light is a trick of regret.
It represents the first glimmer of comprehension
that our department is to be obsolesced.
Our hands are tied by I’m glad we’re through.
Both sides want to claim credit for the lie.
Please retain with your other important records.
Irony’s put on administrative leave.
All my alter-ego knuckleheads
have been ordered out of the building.
Starvation ensues.

The passage of time’s
a shitty guest of honor.

William Merricle is the author of several chapbooks, including Chaos Theory (Nightballet Press, 2013), and the upcoming Fractured Fairy Tales (Crisis Chronicles Press). His work has appeared in many publications, including Pudding Magazine, Portland Review, and Slipstream. He assumes there is someone praying for him.