Burnt Green

My husband slashes

the neighbors’ tires after dark,

then comes home gleaming

with intrigue and achievement.

He muddles through his days,

watching game shows,

the machines in the garage,

the overly-rouged teen

who hands him his paycheck,

but he’s alive at night, demonic.

I can almost love him then.

I can almost look away

when he lays the blade

on the counter and utters

Fucked the Joneses once again.

Never liked that Pontiac.

Burnt green, he calls it. I suppose

I’ll be the next, blood

instead of air, a different kind

of dying. Dead as linoleum,

I’ll be there as he grabs a beer,

turns on the stereo, and hops

around the kitchen, reciting

old and hopeful melodies.

Carl Boon is the author of the full-length collection Places & Names: Poems (The Nasiona Press, 2019). His writing has appeared in many journals and magazines, including Prairie Schooner, Posit, and The Maine Review. He received his Ph.D. in Twentieth-Century American Literature from Ohio University in 2007, and currently lives in Izmir, Turkey, where he teaches courses in American culture and literature at Dokuz Eylül University.