ONE OF THE HOUSES
Eulene’s Hypnagogic Dream Across the room, the alarm clock’s face glared red like an angry father’s. Eulene turned over to pull the plug— darkness clamped its tongs to her temples and yanked up.
With a roaring in her bones she tried to rise, but the bed held hard, her skull wedged into thin edges of the air. The tongs dropped her like a dead weight onto a lawn where card tables and chairs were set up in the sun. Eulene sat and stared at a tanned and bearded stuntman from Ventura who returned her stare, his long legs spreading, tipping his chair back as far as it would go. . .
They shifted in their seats to watch another man in a torn white shirt who stalked back and forth back and forth, muttering to himself, eyes glazed, face blank and glossy as a mannequin’s. A voice in Eulene’s brain called him “Acid Head.” He clasped a Coke bottle like a votive candle. Eulene clutched her purse each time his shadow fell across it. ***
© liveencounters.net POETRY & WRITING January 2022 Celebrating 12th Anniversary
